As formats change and the media they're recorded on ages, it becomes increasingly difficult to transfer the information off of those formats into new, more modern formats. That's basically what archival and restoration is: transferring recordings from one format to another. Usually, the transfer is from an older format on more fragile media to something newer and easier to work with.

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.

I've launched my first public test for DropTracks! Everyone can go to the first beta test at test1.DropTracks.net and try it out from the fan's point of view.

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..

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. 

Independant artists have difficulty getting into the Mastered For iTunes program, but if you wanted to try to deal directly with apple to get in here are the requirements directly from Apple. Even if you meet the requirements they may still referr you. On top of that, they also have payment thresholds and you may never get paid if you don't meet the threshold for your first payment. And now the requirements.

Technical Requirements:

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.

ALL ATX is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit benefiting HAAM, Sims Foundation, Black Fret and Austin Music Foundation and for their fourth annual benefit concert/live CD they themed it "Austin Rocks The Blues." Je

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.

Sound Exchange and The Recording Academy have partnered in advocating for legislation and educating the community about performance rights.

Introduced March 19, 2015 the Allocation for Music Producers Act or AMP Act (H.R. 1457) says this: