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Music Businesses The Almighty Buck Technology

Metadata is the Biggest Little Problem Plaguing the Music Industry (theverge.com) 171

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
From a report: Recently, a musician signed to a major indie label told me they were owed up to $40,000 in song royalties they would never be able to collect. It wasn't that they had missed out on payments for a single song -- it was that they had missed out on payments for 70 songs, going back at least six years. The problem, they said, was metadata. In the music world, metadata most commonly refers to the song credits you see on services like Spotify or Apple Music, but it also includes all the underlying information tied to a released song or album, including titles, songwriter and producer names, the publisher(s), the record label, and more. That information needs to be synchronized across all kinds of industry databases to make sure that when you play a song, the right people are identified and paid. And often, they aren't.

Metadata sounds like one of the smallest, most boring things in music. But as it turns out, it's one of the most important, complex, and broken, leaving many musicians unable to get paid for their work. "Every second that goes by and it's not fixed, I'm dripping pennies," said the musician. Entering the correct information about a song sounds like it should be easy enough, but metadata problems have plagued the music industry for decades. Not only are there no standards for how music metadata is collected or displayed, there's no need to verify the accuracy of a song's metadata before it gets released, and there's no one place where music metadata is stored. Instead, fractions of that data is kept in hundreds of different places across the world. As a result, the problem is way bigger than a name being misspelled when you click a song's credits on Spotify. Missing, bad, or inconsistent song metadata is a crisis that has left, by some estimations, billions on the table that never gets paid to the artists who earned that money.
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Metadata is the Biggest Little Problem Plaguing the Music Industry More

Metadata is the Biggest Little Problem Plaguing the Music Industry

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  • It's not leaving billions on the table (Score:5, Informative)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Thursday May 30, 2019 @04:59PM (#58681944) Homepage

    It really isn't leaving any dollars on the table. Instead, the fixed pie is being allocated improperly. It's not like ASCAP, BMI, etc. have a big vault with billions of dollars that they don't know who to give it to. Instead, those who are the best at getting their information out there correctly stand to get a bigger piece of the pie.

    • Re:It's not leaving billions on the table (Score:4, Funny)

      by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Thursday May 30, 2019 @05:08PM (#58681998) Homepage Journal

      I'll bet Ron Jovi is making a lot of money though.

    • The problem with this is that artists likely have no control on how the metadata is generated, let alone maintained or corrected.

      • Re:It's not leaving billions on the table (Score:4, Interesting)

        by taustin ( 171655 ) on Thursday May 30, 2019 @05:29PM (#58682086) Homepage Journal

        If the artists aren't being paid, neither are the studios who do have control. Or the problem isn't a broken metadata system, but rather, deliberately corrupted metadata on the part of the studio.

        • Or the problem isn't a broken metadata system, but rather, deliberately corrupted metadata on the part of the studio.

          Of course that's not the issue - it's just an honest mistake. Many honest mistakes.

          • Or the problem isn't a broken metadata system, but rather, deliberately corrupted metadata on the part of the studio.

            Of course that's not the issue - it's just an honest mistake. Many honest mistakes.

            Again - nobody is "saving money" or "stealing money" from artists here. The issue is that people who should get paid aren't, which means that others who are getting paid get more than their appropriate share. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, et al have a fixed pie every year that they pay out. The issue here is how it's allocated, not how much is paid out in total.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by taustin ( 171655 )

              Again - nobody is "saving money" or "stealing money" from artists here. The issue is that people who should get paid aren't, which means that others who are getting paid get more than their appropriate share.

              By some people's way of thinking, that stealing, taking money from those who have earned it, but won't get it, and giving it to those who haven't earned it, but will get it. Quibbling who who is doing the stealing doesn't change the fundamental fact that money that is going to one group of people should be going to another.

            • Do you have a source for this claim, because it sounds highly illogical. The license holders are paid per stream or per sale, and then they pay the artists, songwriters, etc. If they collect the full amount for the stream, but don't have the information about someone who was supposed to be paid, then wouldn't they then keep that money, not simply increase someone else's percentage? To do as you're suggesting would require all artist pay to be completely uncoupled from sales of their specific work.
      • Oh yes they do. File suit based on breach of contract with whomever they licensed their work through. Money talks and if you cost companies money, they start to pay attention.

    • Instead, the fixed pie is being allocated improperly. It's not like ASCAP, BMI, etc. have a big vault with billions of dollars that they don't know who to give it to.

      The system is working as designed.

      It's not designed to fairly apportion royalty payments, instead, it is designed to funnel a larger share than was earned to the large publishers.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > It's not like ASCAP, BMI, etc. have a big vault with billions of dollars that they don't know who to give it to.

      No, they just keep 'em.

      The next time a music (or writing, or movie, or whatever) distributor tells you "it's about the creators!", you know it is lying through its stinking teeth.

  • Doesn't sound like it hurts the Music Industry (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday May 30, 2019 @05:07PM (#58681986)

    From the summary, it seems like a problem for musicians, but actually a pretty big boon for the Music Industry that has to pay out less as a result of these "errors"...

    And now you know why it's so hard to fix.

  • Surely the record company you sign the contract with, who releases the song, should be responsible for ensuring the metadata is correct and you get paid?
    If you sign a contract with Sony BGM or whatever, and they license apple to sell it on itunes it shouldn't matter what the metadata says.
    Itunes should pay sony and sony should pay you.
    What am I missing?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Orphis ( 1356561 )

      Payments for streaming (or radio) are quite different from classic sales. It's easy to send the money for each track or album sold to the account who put it up for sale with the proper reporting, and they handle the payments later on. But for streaming, quite often, payments are done to national companies that are supposed to redistribute the money properly. But if the metadata is wrong, then it will not happen.

      But yes, the publisher puts the music on the streaming services and they are responsible to ensur

      • But surely the artist (or whoever is complaining in this case) signs with a single company for distribution, which in turn licenses the various national companies?
        Or are those national companies actually sending payments to each individual artist for each song?

    • Surely the contract they sign states Sony won't take any responsibility for mistakes.
      Surely all the record companies have the same clauses in their contracts, so there is no choice.

      • Typically though when it gets to court, those terms aren't enforceable and it is the same as if they never wrote that part at all.

        That is there to scare people away from representing themselves in the lawsuit!

    • Re:Sounds weird (Score:4, Interesting)

      by outlander ( 140799 ) on Thursday May 30, 2019 @05:55PM (#58682294)

      Is it in their interest to get this right? Everything they get wrong basically stays in their pocket; the musician has to identify the discrepancy before it gets dealt with. So there's no incentive at all for record companies to do this.

      Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a classic example of Hunter Thompson's description of the music business: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”

    • Re:Sounds weird (Score:5, Interesting)

      by acroyear ( 5882 ) <jws-slashdot@javaclientcookbook.net> on Thursday May 30, 2019 @07:25PM (#58682812) Homepage Journal

      Ask Robert Fripp how easy it is to sue BMG to correct royalties after having already won a lawsuit assigning the copyrights properly. Ask him also how 'artist-friendly' BMG is. He'll probably direct you to BMG's "second-tier lawyer".

      BMG has gotten large enough to not care that it violates contracts with ridiculous abandon.

      When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the record label and publishing company make a mistake, the artist pays for it.

  • Data entry (Score:3, Informative)

    by JoeyDot ( 5981942 ) on Thursday May 30, 2019 @05:19PM (#58682056)
    This is actually the data entry problem again. I can't tell you how often I struggle to release good software only to have everything ruined by people unable to input data correctly. People often literally can't even spell their own name. It's mind boggling.

  • Billions of dollars? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Thursday May 30, 2019 @05:20PM (#58682060)

    Oh no, that's terrible.
    I'm sure the RIAA members will make sure those billions are paid to the artists, not kept for themselves.

    That'll totally happen.

    I'm sure it's not a systemic problem that no one with the power to fix it intends to even try, as the money that isn't paid to the artists stays with the same people with the power to fix it.

    "Oops, we accidentally messed up the metadata on your song, looks like we'll have to keep your royalties. Pitty your contract says you can't claim any damages for our mistakes"

    • OMG I need mod points for this comment....

    • Who signs a contract that allows the other party to make "mistakes" for free? I suppose it's possible, but it's stupid.

      • When all their options for record deals include the same clauses, it's not much of a choice.
        I suppose the artists could pursue another career.

    • Yeah, this is precisely what it sounds like to me. I'm sure the labels are making Spotify, Pandora, etc. report exactly how often any song is played and are sure to collect the necessary fees for each millisecond streamed. If the labels thought for one instant that songs were getting played without payment being forked over they'd close down the streaming sites faster than you can scream "RIAA". If that money isn't getting back to the artists, it's not "bad metadata" that's at fault. It's that somewhere

  • a media manager in the digital photo biz here, for 16 years: keep your meta well implemented and managed, it can save your: ass, cash, continued employment, sanity intact.

    • ....and it can protect attribution as well, which is key when your stuff gets stolen - visual artists especially need this.

  • This is why MTV doesn't play music videos anymore. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I used to work for MTV. Specifically I worked on the "Music Video Importer." The program is horrendously broken and in need of replacement. It does not track metadata properly and CONSTANTLY processes updates out of order. Ever heard of 5 seconds of Summer? If you live in Korea I bet you remember that their video premiered about 5 days too early. That was the MVI fucking up.

    They refuse to try to fix it because the Indians they hired (Lardon Tamburro Infotech) have fucked it up so many times they refuse to e

  • Metadata is important in photography too. Cameras automatically attach an "EXIF block" of exposure information to each image, and the block contains several user-modifiable fields that can indicate location, caption, title and copyright. Cameras taht are GPS-equipped, like phones, can add specific coordinates to the location.

    Photo editing software, at least any professional grade of it, is zealous about displaying and preserving image metadata. It appears that audio editors have been lax about metadata, and

  • Bullshit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    As a musician that records and releases their own music, the metadata is entered and included in the music file itself for ogg and mp3 formats...along with some other formats. The lossless formats generally don't contain metadata, but they generally get compressed to one that does contain metadata for distribution.
    However, the metadata has to be manually entered in the appropriate spots prior to the song being rendered in all formats, and it seems that that is just not being done...most likely by design, kn

  • Each streaming service knows how many times that a file gets served. That's the basis of their business. They are using the excuse of missing or incorrect metadata to prevent paying the artists, writers, labels, etc their funds.

    When a track is added to a collection of a streaming company they would set up who they pay for the artist, writer, etc. If this is incorrect in the metadata then the company just has to set up a placeholder and save the funds until the right information can be found. At that time an

  • Metadata is "the biggest little problem". The biggest big problems are that the music industry rips off artists, and the music itself.

  • When I register a song with BMI, I am assigned an ISWC number unique to that song. When I master a recording for CD, the DDP2 file that the pressing plant uses contains ISRC numbers for each track (ISRCs are user-generated, usually by the label). These are embedded in the CD. ISRC is also a metadata field in mp3/ID3. Uploads to Soundcloud, Bandcamp, etc. have ISRCs.

    BUT THERE IS NO WAY TO CORRELATE ISRC WITH ISWC.

    ISWC is necessary to assign performance royalties to songwriters (which is BMI's purpose). ISRCs

  • As any decent data analyst or database administrator can tell you, unless you have one source controlling the data, it will be entered in multiple ways. The industry needs to create a group that controls the metadata so there is only one source and one format for the metadata. The big challenge is going to be correcting all the different data that is already out there.

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