Hereโs my Metadata Guide
July 23, 2023
Submitting music to music supervisors, agents, or libraries?
Getting your metadata right is critical for sync placements!
Just thought Iโd send you my simple guide showing you step-by-step how to get it perfect. Hope it helps!
PS. My 9 year old daughter wanted to film this one. ๐
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Hey! Give us a shout about anything really.
contact Sync Songwriter
Our goal is for you to start getting your music into TV & film.
Yes, having trouble with metadata! I have turned in 3 briefs in Elite Coaching and I know I still don’t have it right. Come to think that without having an Apple system, things are a lot more convoluted. Using Acoustica Mixcraft on a Dell.
I hope my free guide helps you troubleshoot that, Ashley.
some kewl info……
what about when Music SUPV wants both MP3 and WAV files….like you said the WAV metadata don’t transfer, but they still want it……then what?
Hi Tery, they will ask for the WAV file at the very end when it’s ready to bake into the show, movie, or ad so no metadata necessary.
Thank you for your time and help.
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Use AIFF files which are full uncompressed just like wavs and will carry the metadata with it. Plenty of available programs play and allow adding data to AIFF files.
Yes, but you definitely don’t want to use those for sync when reaching out.
Thanks for the info, saved me a lot of time and research. Not quite ready to take advantage of it yet, but getting close!
Cheers!
Nice!
Perfect! Thanks for this!
You got it, Craig.
Thanks Chris. I embed metadata in iTunes and then also add ant extras needed in Disco. Congrats to your budding filmmaker. Nice job ๐ฌ
Thanks for sharing, Catrina.
Hmm. โโAnyโ extras. No โantโ needed ๐
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This is really appreciated!
Please keep your ideas coming.
Thank you SO much!
Thanks Will. Will do!
Hi Chris, thanks for reminding about the importance of metadata. Do you know if there is a way to make DISCO include the contact info as a default in the track information box, so that it can’t be forgotten? It would be handy not to have to enter info that repeats and is the same every time. I should probably ask DISCO but perhaps you know as well?
Many thanks ๐
Johanna Lundstrom
Hey Chris,
Great reminder and thanks a tonne for the download. Awesome stuff.
Bill
You bet, Bill.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reminder! No synchs yet for me, but congrats to the 4 in one person! I use Disco. It’s really easy to add Metadata on that platform.
Have a great rest of your summer! Looking forward to seeing your 9yr old’s video ๐
Good to here, Mich and thanks for sharing.
I finally broke down and got my act together on all this. Whew, what a slog. However, now, I am a Disco power user. Disco is far an away the easiest way to manage the tracks, deal with the meta data and be able to share links. Hopefully some syncs will start to follow.
Nice!
Kudos to your film maker! I stayed up until 2 am (cst) last night, preparing new metadata for songs that I’ve re-arranged and recorded (wanted to send in for briefs). What an exercise! I used your Metadata Guide – and because I spent so much time on it, I developed a rhythm, and some confidence, which definitely will happen if one practices and uses the suggestions to follow the guidelines and CHECK the metadata by sending it to yourself – maybe to another email address, or friend, etc. Thank you!
Great to hear, Cassandra!
I always use iTunes/Apple Music to add the info as it seems to work the best. Then I’ll upload it to Disco and maybe fill out some more fields, but I find the itunes system works best to imprint the metadata on the mp3 itself. You just have to make sure you go to the iTunes Media/Music folder on your computer to copy that version of the mp3 to upload to disco.
Perfect!
Hey Chris
If you have an artist name "pseudonym" that you would like to use would this go into the field where the band name would go?
New subject: How does one secure a pseudonym artist name? Do you have any content that addresses this?
Thank you for all the great information!
Stew
Yes, that is right. You can just start using a pseudonym, no registration necessary unless you are trademarking it.
I like the crows at the beginning ๐
Your metadata guide is a great template! I use iTunes so it makes it easy to follow before migrating to DISCO.
Thanks, Chris!
Cheers, Alex
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Hi Chris! Just like Cassandra I stayed up all night, here in Spain it was 7 am past when I submitted the briefs and was getting anxious cos had to triple check all. When the deadline was getting closer I became faster and faster with metadata, getting the tags, the artwork, the codes etc , and now Im an expert in metadata thanks to you and all the amazing team!!! Certainly practice is perfection!!!!
Great to hear, Bianca!
Thank you Chris, I think your daughter did a great job! ๐
I will let her know. ๐
Hello Chris
As a current student of your AOTSP course, I signed up to DISCO and have been using your template to insert metadata. I found the process simple and easy to follow. Thank you!
The most important thing I realised I had to remember, was to submit the file which had been ‘worked’ and included the metadata as opposed to getting the process confused and sending the original one – especially when submitting music from my desktop via submission links. Now, of course, I have set up a folder on my computer in which my completed tracks have been downloaded and stored and make sure I submit from there.
Glad to see your daughter is keen to get involved at such a young age. She did a great job and I am sure will go far with a Dad like you. ๐
Thank you for the kind words, Connie. Good to hear you are streamlining your process.
Thanks Chris, always useful. Like a lot of folk here I’m starting in iTunes and then adding to the fields in Disco. Julie’s refresher class last night reminded me that it’s really really important to press ‘SAVE" in Disco for each of the sections that you add to. Also – apart from an organisational tool -I really don’t see the point of adding WAV’s to Disco. I think I would prefer to preserve my ‘upload able’ limit and have them in a separate folder.
Congratulations to your budding firm-maker daughter. ๐
Yes, you never want to add WAVs to Disco first. Always mp3s.
Thanks so much for this, it’s really helpful! I’m a bit concerned about some of the songs I’ve already released because I think I put in the wrong genres. When I distributed them on CDBaby I put in synth pop and later realised that electropop was probably more accurate. Also, when I signed up to Bandcamp I was making folk music, so I put my genre as folk. Now, when I release pop songs that have nothing folk about them, Bandcamp just automatically tags them as folk and I’m not sure how to remove it.
That is not a make or break thing, Nur, but I would research on how to fix this for the future.
Thank you Chris, this is great. Youโre a master teacher (and your daughter is so talented with filming)! I am now using Disco and find it super helpful. Appreciate everything about your course!
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Great! Thanks Chris. Obvious! And thanks to your 9-y-old daughter. Iโve got one myself and sheโs totally sold to photography ๐
Nice!
If you have a song with 5 writers using the "composer" field gets overwhelmed quickly by the time you add all the info for each writer. What would you recommend? pack it all in there or use a different field?
You could just say "See comments field" and put them there.
I really thought I’d be moving to TrackStage. I like the people, I was a tester, it has some awesome stuff in it, but I spent a lot of time on Disco. It works, good support, supervisors know it, you guys use it. It’s hard now to imagine moving unless supervisors adopt it. Thanks for the metadata sheet. I’m sure it will be informative and provide me things to do while helping me avoid other things I need to do like washing the dishes. You’re the best!
Thanks Thornton. Just so you know, TrakStage is not a replacement for Disco, it is the app that fills all the gaps.
Thank you. The sheet is a very useful tool. ๐
P.S. I love that your daughter filmed you. Kudos!
Haha, thanks Kathy.
Thanks so much for the info, Chris. So would you recommend transferring all mastered songs to MP3 that I’m thinking of submission to syncing? Even if it’s already on streaming services? I have alot of options and material now.
Yes, you always want to use mp3s but your WAV files will come in to play when the sync is finalized.
as always, thanks very much for the advice!
You are very welcome, John!
I use Mp3tag for metadata, and Dropbox to send. What do you suggest as the optimal .mp3 file size? Is there a more ubiquitous platform that more Supes prefer to use when sending files?
Dropbox is fine. Box and Disco are also good. There is no optimal size for an mp3 but there is not much reason to code above 192 bitrate.
What an amazing resource…thank you, Chris! How cute that your daughter filmed this!
Haha, thanks Jessica!
Is it ok to send soundcloud links to supervisors?
If so, does the souncloud meta data get downloaded with the song, or do you have to embed your own metadata on the track before you upload it to soundcloud?
Thanks
You need to embed the meta data in your mp3 files and Soundcloud is not the best way to do this. You would want to use Dropbox, Box, or Disco. That said, it will be next to impossible getting through to music supervisors without having an "in".