Essential metadata for pitching tracks for sync

Providing essential metadata not only streamlines the clearance process but also increases the chances of music supervisors discovering your tracks while searching in the future.

Here’s an overview of what metadata to add to your tracks when pitching for sync. 

Rights ownership and contact information 

Rights ownership and clearance contact information is the most important metadata to include with your tracks when pitching for sync. In DISCO, this metadata should be placed in the Comments field. 

Your metadata should always include:

• the rights you control for the track (i.e. 50% publishing / 100% master)

• who to contact about licensing your rights for the track and how to contact them

• if there are multiple rights holders involved, always list those rights holders and what percentage they control, i.e.:

Publishing: 50% All Music, 50% My Music Co

Master: 50% Label Inc, 50% Clearance House

Always list contact info, including email, for clearing your rights. If you can provide contact info for all owning parties, that’s great, but not essential. The key thing is to provide full ownership detail in the metadata. If there are different licensing contacts in different regions, please list the different contacts.

Your metadata should look something like this: 

One stop clearance, 100% master and 100% publishing control: My Music Co

For clearance contact: bob@mymusic.co 

If ownership is split, it should look something like this: 

Publishing: 50% All Music, 50% My Music Co

For clearance contact: jane@allmusic.xyz (All Music) // bob@mymusic.co (My Music Co)

Master: 50% Label Inc, 50% Clearance House

For clearance contact: joe@labelinc.xyz (Label Inc) // joanna@clearancehouse.net

This metadata is sometimes added to the Grouping field also. You can add it to the Grouping field if you like, but it should always be added to the Comments field.

Cover songs 

If your track is a cover song, make sure to include what artist or group popularized the song. Include this in the title field, with the original artist in parenthesis, i.e.: 

Blinding Lights (Weeknd cover)

For the rights metadata, always include the artist who performed the song (likely the artist you represent, or yourself if you’re the artist) and who owns the master copyright to that recorded performance. 

It’s preferred, but not essential, to list who owns the composition copyright (publishing) of the covered track. (They need to receive the royalties they’re entitled to, but they also need to provide a sync license to use their song in the sync.)

Your cover metadata should look something like this: 

This track is a cover of Purple Rain, originally popularized by Prince.

Master: 100% master control My Music // bob@mymusic.com

Publishing controlled by UMPG and Sony Publishing (enter contact info if you have it)

Your metadata should look like this:

If your track is a cover, and you're unable to find who controls the publishing, you can list the master rights and contact info only, but ideally include both.

Should I add writer splits?

Adding writer splits can be helpful to easily store and reference that information, but it's not a substitute for putting key rights and contact info in the Comments field.

If you're entering writers splits in the 'Writers' tab in DISCO, make sure you have the setting turned on in Settings > Business Settings to write these splits to the composer field on the tracks you share:

If you're not using DISCO's writer split field, enter writer split information in the Composer metadata field in the format:

Writer 1 name, split %, writer 1 publisher, PRO; Writer 2 name, split %, writer 2 publisher, PRO;

i.e. John Jackson, 50%, Apple Publishing, ASCAP; Jane Johnson, 50%, Pear Publishing, BMI;