The Ten Metadata Commandments
Hear, O Musicians and Music Industry, the Metadata statues and ordinances I speak in your ear this day, so that ye may learn them, and observe to do them.
From the Great Library of Alexandria to the Dewey Decimal System, from MIT to the CD Red Book, from CD-Text to Gracenote, from Apple Music to Spotify to Disco and beyond, the Lords of Metadata hath made a covenant onto us to codify and correctly enterith our information unto the fields of the holy ID3 Tag.
The Lords Of Metadata made this covenant unto us who are alive today, so that our music shall be recognised and found by Music Supervisors, industry AI, search engines and fans, and we shall be paid our up-front-fees and royalties for all usages, in all known and future media, throughout the universe, from the origin of the Earth until perpetuity.
Now I declareth from the Lords Of Metadata unto you, The Ten Metadata Commands for you to follow and obey:
I. Thou Shalt Embed All Thy Correct Metadata Into Thy Mp3s Before Thou Sendeth Them Off To A Music Supervisor.
II. Thou Shalt Createth A Master Spreadsheet Stored On Thy Local Computer To Vouchsafe Thy Metadata.
III. Remember Thy Comments Section And Fill It Wholly.
IV. Presentith Thy Writer’s, Publisher And PRO (Performance Rights Organization) Information Correctly Lest Ye Not Be Paid.
V. Thou Shalt Copy And Paste Thine Descriptive Tags Into The Emails Thy Sendith To Music Supervisors and Their Projects.
VI. Whence Thee Put The Year Of Thy Song’s Releaseth Dateth In Thy Metadata, Doth So Honestlie.
VII. Thou Shall Accurately Define and Enterith Thine Song’s BPM and Tempo.
VIII. Correctly Notate Thine Writer, Publisher and PRO Information In The Composer and Grouping Fields, Lest Ye Not Get Paid Thine Royalties.
IX. Thou Shalt Includith Thine Artwork And Thy Lyrics In Thine Metadata.
X. Stateth In Thy Comments Section Whether Thou Hast Instrumentals, Stems, TV Edits, Trailerized Versions, 30 Second or 60 Second Versions of Thy Song.
Now these are the Metadata Commandments, the statues and ordinances handed down from the Lords Of Metadata to teach you so that ye might do them in the songs of thy catalogue. Observe to do it, so that thy sync and promotional efforts may go well with ye, and thy licenses and streams may increase mightily.
On a more modern note, if you want to learn more about all aspects of sync, join me and music supervisor Paty Carrera for our 10-week Sync U Course – Listening Sessions, Classes on all aspects of sync, on-on-one tutorials and pop-up QA with industry leaders. $300 off the $999 rate until February 1. https://syncsummit.com/syncu/
