The Problems With Music Metadata Pt 1 - What's Your Name, Who's Your Daddy?

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On Thursday October 30, at monthly digital music industry mixer Musica Tecnomica, guest speaker Chris Wiltsee (Executive Director, The Recording Academy), a new San Francisco resident, discussed the Recording Academy's philanthropic effort to build digital posterity for the musical arts in conjunction with the Library Of Congress: The Metadata Project. Today I'm I'm talking about the challenges faced by projects like this one. Stay tuned for part two, which will cover The Metadata Project and other efforts to standardize and protect the posterity of music data.

The digital music industry continues to make great strides at great speeds, but the speed bumps are evident once you need information. Digital music is plagued with territory rights disputes and weak (or zero) standardization of metadata.

What's Your Name?

Goofs and typos are a problem silently plaguing the digital music industry. Humans are the starting point of all metadata, and spelling errors or tracklisting errors are common. Six months ago I paid .99 at iTunes and downloaded Jane's Addiction "Three Days" (for the umpteenth time) and when I pressed play I heard "Jane Says" - so I double checked. Yep, I downloaded "Three Days" - Was the mistake made at the label or at one of the companies funneling metadata to the retailer?

Since this is a major label release, the error was fixed within a month (I'm a Jane's Addiction superfan - I checked.) But I did not get my money back, and I already have at least 7 different versions of Jane Says if you include the first self titled album Jane's Addiction on XXX records. If this had been an independent release, it's likely (guaranteed) the error would not yet be fixed in the iTunes store. I'd estimate 6 months at best for that sort of error, depending on the size of the band.

Song titles aren't the only problem. What about the band name, and any side projects? Is it Dave Matthews, The Dave Matthews Band or Dave Matthews Band (sans "the") or is it Matthews, David?  In addition to the name of a band, as a consumer of music, you do not experience your territory. Every release has specific copyright information and territory rights which are owned (usually) by various labels throughout the world. There are thousands of rights disputes over territory ownership every day in the digital music industry. When litigation begins, the album is often removed from the store. All of the metadata (and availability of the music) is affected by any changes once the rights disputes are settled.

Who's Your Daddy? (When Were You Born?)

Digital music provenance is extremely complicated. But what about the simple stuff, the stuff a consumer experiences? When I started confirming my top 100 albums of the 21st century, it was not simple to verify all of the release dates. I had to do searches outside retail outlets to locate accurate release dates.

Everything you download from a digital retailer (except for digital-only releases) has a Street Date and a Digital Release Date. Street Date is the date the album or single is available in a physical retail store. Digital Release date marks the release of music at digital retail. In the digital music industry, you will see many albums with digital release dates that pre date street dates for online pre-release purposes.

Albums that existed prior to the culture of digital consumption will most likely have a large gap in time between street date and digital release date. iTunes specifies physical release date versus digital release date, but other services do not. And while it's meant to be helpful, the iTunes publication of street date versus digital release date has rendered many a confusing phone call between labels, bands, fans and retailers.

The terminology may seem obvious, but consumers don't want to know both release dates, they just want to know the answer to one question: "when did the album come out?" The business of music has, for licensing purposes, now adopted (at least) two definitions of "out."

A music consumer needs one search result.

Some digital retailers do not acknowledge "physical street date." Therefore, an album with a digital release date of 2008 but physical release date of 1993 shows up in most retail services with only the digital release date. My favorite example is Liz Phair's (best) album Exile in Guyville. It shows up in LaLa three times, with three release dates.

I've loved the album since 1995, so I know the actual release date is 1993, but if I click that button, there's nothing available for sale. If I click the 2008 button, et voila. But I say: too much work. Even for an internerd like me.

It's a problem.

What About Liner Notes?

According to my mom, if you search my first and last name on the Barnes & Noble in-store computer, it will lead you to an album: The Very Best Of The Samples.

It's because my name is mentioned in the liner notes. However, my name appears on other liner notes and the metadata online for those releases isn't as extensive.

So, just one result at Barnes & Noble - which I'm sure will keep my mom happy for many years.