YouTube Implements ISNI

Savannah Berry - Silent Night Without You

YouTube announced this week they are implementing the ISNI standard for name disambiguation across their whole platform. The International Standard Name Identifier is an ISO-certified global standard number for uniquely identifying anyone who creates anything. Public names of a researcher, investor, writer, artist, actor, performer, publisher, etc... are unambiguously attributed by number globally in perpetuity regardless of field, medium, or type of art/creation. It also distinguishes you from other artists that might have the same name.

In the US, Numerical Gurus are the only agency that serves independent artists applying for ISNIs. Register for an ISNI by clicking here, or read more on the Numerical Gurus site.

ISWC

The International Standard Musical Work Code, or ISWC, is a unique identifier for musical works. Like the ISRC is for recordings and the ISNI is for people, the ISWC helps identify and disambiguate musical works. Along with being a unique identifier, the ISWC is also permanent and an internationally recognized ISO reference number for the identification of musical works.

International Standard Name Identifier is new metadata to resolve name ambiguity for contributors to creative works. This number can define a person, like a writer, artist, performer, producer, etc., or it can define an organization, like publishers, studios, aggregators, etc..

RIN-M

The newest metadata standard for music is here apparently and it is RIN-M. Soundways has a free plugin that gets saved in your DAW when you are creating the tracks and you can add everyone's information and send it along. It is a cool idea on solving the issue with how recording credits are stored and transferred. You can download the plugin here.

Metadata

RIN-M

GRAMMY®

Capitalization of Track Titles

This is a common issue that many of my clients don't think about until they're in the mastering studio getting asked about it. Did you mean to not capitalize this word? Well, here are some guidelines.

Technical Info

iTunes

Metadata

iTunes Cover Art Specs

Recently, I had a client that ran into some problems with the cover art for their project. It seems iTunes has some rather stringent (in my opinion) requirements for the cover art. Part of me understands that there needs to be some requirements or checks in place and I agree with Apple that people should not be 'misleading' in the representation of their music. But, I felt this particular case may have been a bit ridiculous.