As Carole King said, where you lead I will follow…so we’ve need to make sure she’s not misled! 🎶
When release metadata contains words or phrases that match to high profile musical artists, songs, or albums, this can cause confusion and mislead consumers.
Famous artists and song titles
When release metadata contains words or phrases that match to high profile musical artists, songs, or albums, this can cause confusion and mislead consumers.
For example, if someone has written a song called ‘Rapping About Cardi B’s Track, WAP’. It’s absolutely fine to have Cardi B as the topic of your song, it’s okay to reference and talk about her… But because the track/album title contains “Cardi B” and “WAP”, stores may assume that those terms have been deliberately included so that when customers search for “Cardi B WAP”, your track is more likely to come up.
Unfortunately, whether this was done deliberately or not, it isn’t something stores take into consideration. For this reason, avoid mentioning any famous musicians, their track titles, or their albums, in any of your metadata.
Search engine optimization terms
Stores have recently gotten stricter about metadata they consider to be ‘piggybacking‘ on common search terms their subscribers use to find playlists.
Artists with terms like ‘lofi’, ‘slowed + reverb’, or ‘sped up’ in their artist names, which describe the type of content being uploaded, are now having their content removed by stores. Please avoid using these in your artist names.
Artist names with popular genres in them are also facing action from stores. ‘Hardstyle’, ‘Nightcore’, ‘Phonk’, and other genres, are now no longer allowed in artist names. Artist names which are generic descriptions of the content being uploaded are also being removed by stores. This might be things like ‘White Noise Sounds’, ‘Nature Sounds Ambiance’.
Stores are currently being very active around this type of metadata; and the terms they do and don’t allow in artist names is changing all the time, so unfortunately we can’t provide a definitive list. However, we would advise using a unique artist name that doesn’t describe the type of content you’re uploading.
Check out the full RouteNote Style Guide here!
If you have any further queries, feel free to get in touch with us!
See also:
Can I use generic titles and names?
Can I upload cover songs with RouteNote?
How do I fill Audio Metadata?