What metadata is

Metadata is all the information that describes your music: titles, artists and their roles, genre, language, codes, rights and more. It isn't the audio or the cover art — it's the data that travels with them.

Stores use that data to publish your release on the right page, attribute it to the right artists and make it show up in search. An error in the metadata means a badly built store page, incomplete credits or royalties that don't match up.

Release-level and track-level metadata

There are two levels:

• Release level: describes the album, EP or single as a whole.
• Track level: describes each song separately. On a compilation or a collaboration it can differ from track to track.

When you submit the release, the checklist verifies that both levels are complete and consistent with each other.

What it includes

At the release level:

• Title and, if applicable, version (deluxe edition, remastered…).
• Type: single, EP, album or compilation.
• Record label.
• Primary genre and, optionally, a secondary one.
• Primary language, mood and country of origin.
• Release artists and their roles.
• Dates (release date and original release date).
• Codes: UPC/EAN, catalog number, reference number.
• Rights: license type, copyright holder and publishing rights holder.

At the track level:

• Track title and version.
• ISRC.
• Lyrics language (or instrumental).
• Explicit content.
• Artists and collaborators with their roles.
• Lyrics, where applicable.

Why accuracy matters

• Correct delivery: each store builds the release page from this data. If a single's track title doesn't match the release title, or the language doesn't line up, review rejects it.
• Credits: roles determine who is credited and who takes part in the royalty split.
• Discovery: genre, language and artist information affect how your music is classified and found.
• Royalty matching: the codes (ISRC, UPC) are what let platform reports be matched to your release.

What isn't easy to fix later

Some metadata is locked once the release leaves draft (date, time, timezone and other fields depending on the case).

Any change to a release that's already distributed goes back through review before it reaches the stores, and the stores take time to reflect it. That's why it's worth getting the metadata right the first time.

Good practices

• Write titles and names exactly as you want them to appear in stores, with no abbreviations or extra text.
• Keep the release and its tracks consistent (same primary artist, same language where applicable).
• Reuse the ISRC of a recording that's already been released; don't generate a new one for the same version.
• Check that the artist name matches its profile.

The details of each field are covered in the other articles in this section.