Modernizing music metadata, unifying standards, and linking data (MiCannes preview).

Metadata is the lifeblood of rights and royalties in today’s music industry, yet our current systems are painfully fragmented.

This article, part of a 10-part series on modernizing music metadata, examines the first two foundational tasks ahead of the upcoming MiCannes event.

We focus on:

(1) moving “From Patchwork to Protocol,” i.e., establishing a unified global metadata standard and

(2) fixing “Metadata Identifiers & Links,” i.e., ensuring works and recordings stay immutably connected.

These are critical steps toward a future-proof infrastructure for music rights, aimed at professionals and investors who understand that accurate metadata is key to unlocking value in the music industry.

Why do these issues matter?

Poor metadata isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a major reason creators miss out on income. By some estimates, bad or inconsistent song data has left “billions on the table unpaid to musicians”.

The following sections dive into how we can change that, from rethinking standards to harnessing new tech models.

From patchwork to protocol: toward a global metadata standard

The current state of music metadata is often described as a patchwork.

• Digital Service Providers (DSPs) each have style guides for formatting metadata.
• Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) in different regions follow varying standards (for example, the Common Works Registration or CWR format, used inconsistently); and
• Record labels grapple with legacy data silos.

With no authoritative standard, enforcement is largely manual and inconsistent, inevitably leading to errors and unpaid royalties. In short, “music data is messy” — metadata can be missing, duplicated, or conflicting, and even key identifiers vary across systems. This chaos undermines trust and efficiency in royalty tracking.

Existing practice (the patchwork)

Each stakeholder uses its convention. A song title or songwriter name might be entered differently across Spotify, Apple Music, various PROs, and label databases. Minor discrepancies or omissions cascade into major revenue losses when plays aren’t properly attributed. The lack of a global schema means no guarantee that one party’s data will match another’s. Thus, there is no guarantee that payments will flow correctly to the rights holders. The result is a costly, error-prone system where money falls through the cracks.

Potential solution (the protocol):

The industry now envisions a unified, enforceable metadata standard that all parties adopt. Instead of patching existing systems, this calls for embedding the standard into a shared, immutable infrastructure (a distributed ledger or blockchain). In practice, this means whenever a new song or rights data is created, it would be logged into a common system using the global format.

AI tools can assist by automatically validating entries at the point of creation, flagging typos, missing fields, or format inconsistencies so that bad data never enters the system in the first place. This “protocol” approach could drastically reduce ambiguity and disputes, as every service and society would reference the same truth source for metadata.

The financial assets model (Embedding the Standard):

An even more radical approach, the “Copyright as a Financial Asset” model, is to bake the standard into the core data structure of the copyright asset. In this model, when a song (as a copyright asset) is created, it is assigned a record on a ledger that contains all required metadata fields in the proper format.

This standard becomes the asset’s non-negotiable “articles of incorporation,” meaning the metadata isn’t just enforced from the outside — it’s intrinsic to the asset from day one.

Every subsequent party (distributor, publisher, CMO, etc.) interacting with that asset would use the same canonical data. This shift from a patchwork of databases to a protocol-driven ledger could provide the transparency and consistency that today’s music rights infrastructure desperately needs.

It’s the difference between endlessly fixing metadata errors after the fact versus preventing them by design.

The industry lays a foundation of clean, interoperable data by moving from patchwork to protocol. This foundation is crucial for further innovation in rights management, royalty automation, or new financial models for music assets.

Consistency at the global standard level means less time spent reconciling data and more time capturing the true value of music copyrights.

Metadata identifiers & links: connecting works and recordings

Even with a solid metadata standard, we face another longstanding challenge: inconsistent identifiers and broken links between musical works and sound recordings. In the music ecosystem, compositions and recordings are tracked separately — compositions (the underlying songs) use the ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code), and recordings (the specific performances/files) use the ISRC (International Standard Recording Code). These codes are meant to correspond, but too often, they don’t line up, creating a “weakest link” in the royalty chain.

Existing practice (fragmented identifiers):

In theory, every released recording should carry an ISRC, every composition an ISWC, and databases should map one to the other. In practice, this mapping is frequently incomplete or error-ridden. Many rights databases operated by labels, publishers, PROs, and streaming services are siloed and may contain duplicate or erroneous entries. ISRCs might be missing or misassigned; ISWCs are sometimes issued late (after a song is released) or not linked to all the recordings of that work. It’s common to find that a hit song’s various recordings (album version, radio edit, live version, cover versions, etc.) are not all linked to the same composition ID.

These broken links mean that work usage can go unrecognized, and if usage isn’t recognized, songwriters and publishers won’t get paid correctly. For example, a streaming service knows the ISRC of a track it played, but if it can’t instantly match that to the song’s ISWC and rights owners, the royalties for the composition may sit unclaimed.

This problem has been widely acknowledged: linking ISWCs to ISRCs at the point of release is crucial and has long been an obstacle for music creators.

Potential solution (unified linking via tech):

We need to establish reliable, automatic connections between works and recordings to fix these broken links. One approach is using blockchain technology and/or advanced graph databases to create a shared ledger of identifiers. In such a system, when a new song is registered, its composition ID and any associated recording IDs would be entered together in an immutable record. This links the work to all its recordings (and vice versa) from creation.

A blockchain-based registry could serve as a decentralized, globally accessible reference that anyone (labels, PROs, DSPs, etc.) can query to find the right links. Graph database solutions, on the other hand, excel at modeling relationships, meaning one could navigate from a recording to its underlying work and all the contributors in a single connected dataset. The goal in both cases is the same: ensure that every use of a recording traces back to the appropriate work and owners instantly and accurately.

This would eliminate the need for after-the-fact matching efforts that are “time-consuming, expensive, and not necessarily accurate” in today’s system.

The tech model (unique ledger IDs & tokenized links):

The tech model extends the idea of unified linking by assigning each copyright asset a unique ledger ID (sometimes called a CopyrightID for the work). Under this framework, a musical work (composition) is created on the ledger with its ID, and all recordings derived from that work are registered as linked child assets under the same umbrella. The familiar industry identifiers (ISWC for the job, ISRC for each recording) are still used. Still, now they’re firmly bound together within one secure record. Moreover, each asset’s ownership splits, and shares are represented as tokenized stakes in the ledger structure.

This means that the work and recordings are linked for informational purposes, and the actual rights and revenue shares are embedded as digital tokens connected to that asset. Every songwriter, publisher, artist, or label could hold tokens representing their portion of ownership. Transactions (like a licensing deal or a royalty payment) could then be executed and tracked through this ledger. In essence, linking isn’t an afterthought — it’s inherent and immutable by design, providing an unbreakable chain from the original song to every version of its use.

Reliable metadata links are fundamental for the modern music industry. Even the best metadata standards won’t translate into fair payouts without guaranteeing that works and recordings correspond correctly. By assigning robust identifiers and maintaining their connections on an industry-wide ledger, we ensure that when a song is streamed, sampled, or sold, every entitled party can be identified and compensated in near-real time. This level of connectivity will enable innovations like automated royalty micro-payments, new financial products based on royalty streams, and more transparent accounting for all stakeholders.

Outlook to MiCannes

The above two areas — global metadata standards and identifier linkages — form the bedrock of a reimagined music rights infrastructure. Moving from a patchwork of inconsistent practices to a protocol-driven approach and securing the data links between works and recordings, we address the root causes of royalty inefficiencies. These reforms can unlock significant value (recovering some of those “billions” in lost royalties) and make the music industry more attractive for investment as rights become more like well-defined financial assets rather than opaque bets.

These topics are just the beginning. They represent Tasks 1 and 2 of our 10-part deep dive into modernizing music metadata. The discussion will continue at MiCannes 2025, where industry leaders, technologists, and investors will explore these and other critical tasks — from rights management and AI, to new monetization models under the NIM/CaaS vision. If you’ll be at MiCannes or following along, look out for the panel on building a modern music rights infrastructure. We invite music industry professionals, tech innovators, and investors to join the conversation.

How do you see metadata reform shaping the future of music?

Your insights and questions are welcome as we prepare for this important discussion.