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Music Metadata: How to Tag Your Song Correctly

Metadata is the information attached to your song: its title, artist names, credits, genre, language, and codes. It decides how your track appears on every platform, who gets paid, and whether algorithms recommend it to the right listeners. Most metadata mistakes are permanent once a release is live, so accuracy at upload time is not optional.

The core fields you must get right

• Track title: the song name only. Do not add featuring artists, remix information, artist names, or producer credits to the title field.
• Primary artist: enter your artist name exactly the same way on every track and every release. One spelling variation can split your catalogue across two artist pages.
• Featured artists: use the dedicated featured-artist field. Never write features into the primary artist field.
• Composer and lyricist: the people who wrote the music and the words.
• Producer: the producer credit for the track.
• Publisher: the publisher representing the composer, or the composer name again if there is no publisher.
• Genre and subgenre: the closest honest match for your sound.
• ISRC: the unique code identifying this specific recording.
• Explicit flag: mark explicit content accurately according to your distributor's guidelines.
• Lyrics language: the language of the sung lyrics.
• Ownership: composition owner, master recording owner, and the years of composition and recording.

Three mistakes that cause real damage

First, inconsistent artist names. A single typo creates a second artist profile, and merging them later is slow. Second, stuffing the title field with features, producers, or version notes. Platforms reject this or display it wrong, and it looks unprofessional. Third, wrong or missing credits. Credits decide who gets recognised and who gets paid. If a songwriter or producer is left out of the metadata, their royalties may never reach them.

Genre honesty beats genre gaming

Choosing a popular genre you do not belong in does not bring you more listeners. It brings you the wrong listeners, who skip quickly, which tells algorithms your song does not satisfy anyone. Pick the genre and subgenre that genuinely describe your track. Accurate tagging puts your music in front of people who already like that sound, which is the audience most likely to save, follow, and return.

Before you submit, read every field back once against your release plan. Check the spelling of every name, confirm the credits match your split sheet, and make sure the title on your artwork matches the title in your metadata character for character. Ten minutes of proofreading at upload time saves weeks of correction requests later.

Get your metadata right — distribute with TIR →