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Rights and royalties for a song travel down two paths.

One for the written part of a song called the musical work and one for the recorded part called the sound recording.

There are different stakeholders involved in each path including managers, labels, music publishers, CMOS, PROs, DSPs and aggregators, distributors, and of course, creators.

When we talk about responsibility we mean which of these stakeholders are responsible in the registration and royalty process, what they do, and at what point?

When registering musical works and sound recordings you need to have all the right metadata.

That is information about a song and its creation.

Sound recordings and musical works will have different metadata and different identifiers to help track all the information attached to them.

Who is responsible for collecting that metadata will depend on your situation.

Like if you have a publishing deal, your music publisher will usually register your work on your behalf.

Or if you have a label deal, your label will often take care of registering the metadata for the sound recordings you release.

But even if you have this kind of support it's still important to be on top of the admin, registration, and managing all of the metadata to your songs.

The Importance of Metadata

2 min read

Why is metadata so important?

Metadata and identifiers are necessary to accurately track the usage of your musical works and sound recordings so you get credited and paid.

The creation of a takes two paths: that of the and that of the . Often, these can be very different, happening at different times with different , companies, and organizations involved, such as:

To track plays and identify who is entitled to be paid for the use of the musical work, the appropriate and must be generated and entered into the . Typically, this happens by the musical work with the appropriate and providing additional metadata to . For example:

  • Title

  • Songwriter and music publisher names

  • numbers

  • Other data requested by CMOs and distributors

To track plays of a sound recording and identify who is entitled to be paid, the appropriate metadata and identifiers must be generated and entered into the music industry ecosystem, typically by registering the sound recording with the appropriate CMO and providing additional metadata to distributors. For example:

  • Title

  • Performer and record label names

  • Splits

  • Other data requested by CMOs and distributors

Explore our pages on Metadata and Identifiers to learn more.

Who is responsible for getting this into the music ecosystem will depend on your situation, whether you have a record label or music publisher involved or work independently and directly with a distributor. Explore our our pages on Responsibilities to learn more.

Whatever your situation is, you should always ensure the job gets done. After all, it’s your work, credits, and money at stake. Keep reading to learn more.

Video credit: Tiffany Orvet, Dilun Riad Edmon, Daniel Hjellum, Tim Ljungstedt, David Lebna, Artu Kontkanen, Tobias Leo Nordquist, Ponny Höijer, William Engström, Parapix