BBR Co-Founders had the honor of speaking on a panel at Belmont University a few weeks ago. The topic was "Metadata is Money: How collecting it from the beginning gets you paid more and faster" and you may be asking yourself "WHAT THE HELL IS METADATA?"

DO NOT WORRY! You are not alone. The vast majority of the audience didn't know either. For the best answer, just read this! This panel was put together by Jammber CEO Marcus Cobb (who is trying to solve some metadata problems our industry is facing). So we came together to offer different perspectives on how metadata affects our business and our particular roles. Here's four key takeaways from the talk:

Metadata needs to be collected from the very beginning of a studio session to ensure proper registration of the song. This means gathering songwriter info, all names of people that work on the song/album, release date, record date, etc. It can even start in the songwriting session.
Right now there is no standard for data collection and storage. Major labels do it one way, indies do it another, and some independent musicians don't do it at all (eek)! This needs to change.
Proper storage and registration of metadata ensures that everyone who should get paid, does.
Ultimately, it's up to YOU -- the artist, manager, producer (anyone who works closely on a project) to make sure the song is properly registered in all of the right places and has all of the right information attached to it.

TRUST, we could go wayyyyyy more into this topic, but that's for another day and another time! Happy Friday!

xo,
BBR

[Thanks to Sonia Ulrich of Jammber for snapping a few pics of the chat!]