Making sure your metadata in your MP3s is of the highest quality is essential in presenting your music in the most professional, successful manner possible for sync so your music can get found, selected, licensed and you get paid.
And to help you get your metadata done the right way, we created our free Metadata Style Guide so that you can learn how to enter all the information that music supervisors and other decision makers need to find your music, license your music and to know how to contact you and pay you your royalties.
Today, I’m sharing with you a quick tip on how to fill out the comments section of your MP3s metadata so that you make sure the most vital information is always visible no matter who you send the music to and in what method.
The comments section of an MP3 file’s metadata has a strict limit of 255 characters. This is the default. If you are using a service like disco.ac, there’s no strict limit imposed in the comment area, so many people will put lots of tags and information in this section, but when the MP3 is shared outside of disco, only the first 255 characters will be kept.
And while this is fine within disco, when you send the file to someone who isn’t using disco, if you don’t organize your metadata right, essential information may be lost.
A lot of people don’t use disco – especially decision makers who are not music supervisors, like editors and many other people on a creative team. This is why you need to make sure you organize your information properly. Here’s how to do it:
1. Your contact information. The very first thing you need to enter is your phone number and address – here’s mine +19175931997 m@disconic.com – notice I didn’t put in any commas. I put in the + sign as they was essential, but as there is no need to add commas, I just put spaces between each bit of info as is necessary.
2. Clearance difficulty. This is where you put either “onestop” (meaning that you control publishing and master and you are the only person needed to clear the license), “easy clear” (meaning that you must talk to others to finalize the deal, but that the clearance process is quick and simple – usually between 12-48 hours). If the song is not an easy clear or onestop, just leave this area blank. It will be evident to the decision maker that there will be some clearance hurdles they will have to handle to clear the track. Also, if there are any special encumbrances like samples, list the samples here. Samples are not necessarily a deal breaker, but the music supervisor should be alerted to the need to clear them before usage, as they will have to clear these separately.
3. Song elements – Instrumentation, tempo, vocals, language. Next I put in the information on what the song sounds like in terms of the actual elements, like female vocals, upright bass, its tempo (midtempo, uptempo) and language if it is not in English. And example would be “female vocals upright bass uptempo Japanese).
4. Descriptive tagging. Next, I add the info and tags the describe the song’s feel and emotion: “dance electronic synth piano house anthemic dreamy building driving melodic”
5. More Descriptive tagging. Finally, I add information on what artists the song may sound like. In this case, we use RIYL (Recommended if you like) then the names of the acts that sound similar. Here’s the example “RIYL Deadmau5 Kaskade Shinichi Osawa”
The finished product will look like this:
“+1 917 593 1997 m@disconic.com easy clear female vocals synth piano uptempo Japanese vocals j-pop dance electronic swelling anthemic dreamy building driving melodic RIYL Kaskade Deadmau5 Shinichi Osawa”
And that’s it. This data set is less than 255 characters, it has the vital information organized properly and will be seen by everyone no matter what method you use to enter your metadata and who receives it.
