The Power of Metadata – Essential Concepts

In the streaming era, metadata has become the invisible but essential foundation of the music industry. Far more than mere technical information, it ensures the identification, classification, and valorization of each track, allowing artists to be discovered, rights holders to get paid, and platforms to offer personalized experiences to their users.

However, managing them remains a daily challenge, requiring rigor and expertise to ensure the visibility and traceability of works within an ocean of digital content. To understand the issues and best practices surrounding metadata, we met Thomas Pihan, Head of Digital Content Operations, and Orancie Bureau, Digital Content Operations Manager, both specialists on the subject at IDOL, who shed light on this most strategic lever.

Thomas: In music, metadata is all the information related to an audio file. This includes the artist’s name, producer, author, track title, but also more technical data such as an ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) or an ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code), which are like barcodes for the work.

This metadata is essential to identify, classify, reference and distribute audio content on streaming platforms. The more complete and precise it is, the easier it is to collect and distribute royalties, thereby improving music referencing and user experience.

Orancie: The Digital Content Operations team manages the reception and processing of what we call “products”, i.e., EPs, albums, singles, or videos. We are the first to receive metadata from labels. Our role is to support each client in optimizing this metadata, ensuring that products are enriched as much as possible.

Thomas: Our job has three dimensions. First, quality control to ensure that the content is properly charted according to platform rules, each of which has very specific rules. Second, training for the label to help them save time and understand the importance of having complete metadata. Finally, enriching the existing catalog, especially when acquiring old catalogs, to include metadata that follows platform evolutions and requirements.

Thomas: Each platform has its own quality and metadata requirements, meaning that the fields to be filled vary from one platform to another. Some fields are mandatory, notably ISRC codes and other essential technical information. However, to optimize discoverability, artist names, and therefore not only main artists but also features or remixers, are paramount.

Whenever possible, it is also recommended to provide artist identifiers, aka the artist ID corresponding to an artist page on the platforms. Although not all platforms support it, providing these IDs 100% guarantees that the content will be associated with the correct artist page, thus avoiding homonymy issues. We often face this problem, as recently with Claude, a microqlima artist, for example. Nevertheless, these fields linked to artist IDs are not mandatory.

Orancie: Similarly, information concerning secondary artists is a priority to ensure good discoverability and availability of the reference, but not mandatory.

Thomas: The availability of a product implies that the content is properly online on platforms and linked to the correct pages. If, for example, a wrong genre is sent or too many singles before an album, this can contradict platform rules, which could then refuse to put the product online. Hence the importance of being extremely rigorous with this metadata.

Thomas: The importance of genres and sub-genres is well established. Our colleagues in the DSP Editorial & Partnership team, when pitching a track to a platform, must be able to know which editorial team to submit it to. We can miss playlist placement opportunities simply because the sound was presented to the wrong ear, so to speak.

Orancie: In the non-mandatory credits, we can mention instrument credits and technical credits, or lyrics. We encourage labels to provide them and strive to systematically integrate them into the product, as they are very important for referencing.

Thomas: At IDOL, we imagine that the cleaner, better organized, tidier, and more complete the catalog, the more it will be valued by platforms, but this remains a supposition. However, Apple Music, for example, requires detailing the roles of each artist to be able to display them on its store, unlike other platforms, which will impose fewer constraints.

It is difficult to confirm the direct impact of this information on search results. We simply know what improves the user experience. There is no universal “magic recipe”; if an algorithm were known to everyone, it would lose its effectiveness. We strive to optimize our data to maximize the chances of success, although there is no guarantee of results.

Orancie: It should also be noted that some platforms are specialized, such as Beatport for example, while others like Spotify or Deezer, to name a few, are more generalist, which will influence the distribution of works.

Thomas: IDOL does not own the metadata; we simply distribute it. It is therefore the labels that provide it to us. To ensure that the metadata meets platform requirements, we have made certain information mandatory before delivery: without it, the album, EP, or single cannot be sent to the platforms. In addition, a quality control is carried out by the Digital Content Operations team to ensure metadata optimization.

Orancie: We work directly with labels. And so we adapt to the size of the structure and the staff available to provide the necessary information.

Thomas: When labels have new music, they import the information directly into our Labelcamp distribution tool. On our end, we check their compliance within the submission flow itself. Thanks to the comments integrated into the application, we can communicate directly with labels without having to use external tools. If the metadata is complete, a simple validation is sufficient. If not, we work with them to complete and optimize the information in a smooth and centralized manner.

Orancie: Labels have a great deal of autonomy on Labelcamp, including for “switches” – when a label decides to leave a competitor to join us. For large catalogs, we set a validation schedule to efficiently manage mass imports. All of this monitoring is done through Labelcamp, which facilitates communication and speeds up the process. Our role is to train them in the use of the solution and support them in this fully integrated workflow, which is much simpler and, above all, more centralized than generic ticketing systems.

Metadata therefore plays a much more strategic role than it seems: it conditions the availability, visibility, and valorization of music in the digital age. Despite its complexity, rigorous and collaborative work between labels and distributors allows for making the most of it to serve artists and rights holders. Join us for part two, where we will explore the practical challenges and power of metadata in the success of music projects.

The SPPF invited Pascal Bittard, founder of IDOL, to talk about the importance of data in artist development.

Data has become central to decision-making for the development of artistic projects. But what has it really changed? How to analyze it well? What opportunities does it bring to labels? What are the risks? Pascal Bittard answers.