What Is Music Metadata?

How do you add metadata to music files? What is metadata in music? This video is audio metadata explained, including what metadata to add to an mp3, AIFF or WAV music file. Embed metadata to an mp3 file all the way to what metadata is needed for music licensing.

In this video, Michael gives a music metadata how to, and also goes through a great metadata strategy for sending music to production music libraries to get your music on film and TV.

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#MusicMetadata #MetadataMusic #AddMetadataToMusicFile

[MusicForIncome]

Do you add any extra fields to your metadata? Any cool tips you have for writing great track descriptions for your metadata? What do you do for "better meta?!" Comment below!

[lauraprincipato]

Thank you! 👍
This is the most comprehensible explanation of metadata application on the whole of you tube. He explains the who, what, when, where and why. 👏

[andreasfranzmann]

Michael that stuff is golden! Thank you so much for sharing!
All the best, Andy

[barrytunes]

Terrific video with information I wouldn't have found anywhere else. Thank you, Michael!

[lorendigiorgi]

Excellent info, Michael! I’ve known the importance of accurate metadata for some time, but never thought of saving it to a spreadsheet for ease of use later on.

[mikecirasuolo]

Thank you Michael, As always valuable information! Appreciate your time spent

[jigsound]

Thanks for sharing, Michael! This is an extremely important topic.

We started with the spreadsheet route, but immediately realized that with our particular business strategy this was just too much work (relatively fast-paced production and anywhere from 20 to 40 edits per track for maximum commercial flexibility out of the box and multiple marketplace platforms / music libraries for non-exclusive licensing, each with a different metadata format). Eventually, we decided to write an in-house metadata management software, which is the backbone of our whole business today. After the substance, of course, I hope. 😁

It handles everything from organizing DAW projects into album folder structures to inputting, importing, and formatting metadata, and exporting CSVs, packaging ZIPs and watermarking the MP3 previews. The template for importing and exporting is set up with an internal "markup language" with which we can build dynamic recipes for each library.

This way, we can offer our entire catalog or any part of it to be represented by a new partner with virtually no additional work/cost on our behalf, and precisely in the desired format: just one ZIP file containing every WAV file, and a CSV file containing all the requested the metadata.

PS. Of the categories you mention, the soundalike metadata is actually the only part we have omitted from filling into our database to date, as less and less marketplaces accept copyright-protected tags for their search. Maybe it is a bit differently with the boutique libraries?

BR
Eero

[modernman]

thank you Michael for sharing and your kindness

[MichaelFix]

Excellent (& important) information! Thanks for creating these videos.

[RogerBadgerDSFlyer]

Great video, thank you. Covered exactly what I wanted to find out.

[natanael]

Wow... Thank you so much for providing all the information about Metadata in details! God Bless You Man!!!😊

[jdubbs]

Michael, new sub. here. Thank you for sharing this valuable information with us! "Keep Doing That Voodoo That You Do!"

[StephenRidley]

Thank you for the excellent details here! About the 'DAW Title' (great name for it hah): What about the actual AIFF file name? Does that matter? For instance, I'll enter a proper song name into my metadata fields, but the actual file still has a DAW title. Is that bad? Seems like the filename shouldn't matter as long as your metadata is correct.

[backpackingvillager]

Thank you but still got some questions.
1. When using music aggregator to get auto uploaded on Spotify or YT, do I have add metadata before or after uploading on MA?

2. Using MA, I would like to upload wav track but I cannot able to add metadata on wav file. So how do I do this?

3. If suppose I release wav track with metadata, then if somebody downloaded that track via Spotify or third party as mp3, will that mp3 automatically have metadata in it?

4. About the info, I wrote lyrics and I'm also the vocal but the instrumental is done by the producer with my little main melody but he also added the melody as most of it. So who is the main composer here?

5. I would like to use my artist name as different than Original name but I want to add my Original name on the lyrics. Is this good idea or should I use artist name on both as vocals and lyrics?

[musicmediaproductions]

Great video!
Thank you for your time!
We are extremely new to this field and your channels have helped us out tremendously!

Question #1: How do you add metadata into the AIF files and wave? (we are using a Macbookpro)
Question #2: How do you make a spreadsheet for metadata?

Thanks again and have a great day!

[SharmaYelverton]

Thanks Michael. Quick question, I often have a variable BPM throughout my tracks, ether slightly tempo variations for realism or actually tempo changes per section. What would you suggest in this case for tempo meta data?

[jenniferwaldren]

Thank you for your video, Michael. I'm about to send my first recorded song to a distributor, but according to their website, they say "Unfortunately any metadata you have embedded in your audio files will be not be retained once we complete our processing." Why would a songwriter use this distributor? And how would sales and downloads be tracked without this information attached to the audio file? First timer, here....😐

[JohnsTechBlog]

I struggle to find soundalikes for many of my instrumental tracks. Do you have any suggestions on how to find them, please?

[SharmaYelverton]

Hey again, regarding Era, what do you put if your music is non era specific cinematic orchestral music?

[zugo-tg]

When it comes to physical medium releases however, the data would have to come from the booklet or other associated artwork.