Jim noted that we need data to help people find and use our recordings with today's digital distribution. Just today (Oct 20), 50k new tracks were added to Spotify, each with maybe dozens of creators, each due payment and credits if the recording is distributed. With metadata, you facilitate proper credit and compensation; and allow finding music, such as a search by genre, by a session musician or by tempo (a huge aspect for the fitness music market).

Jim also explained some acronyms used.

• DDEX - entity that works on data interchange in the industry
• ISRC - international standard recording code
• ISWC - international standard musical works code
• ISNI - international standard Name Identifier (standardize artist names)
• RIN - Recording Information Notification file

Vickie spoke on the Music Modernization Act of 2018, which starts January 2021 - Real Soon Now. It centralizes publishing info and should be a big leap forward for metadata use. Until this, recordings are not linked to the credits, so rights agencies have to match master recordings with credits/publishing. So much music, so many creators, and your money is being lost.

Jim gave some money stats: Universal Music Group (UMG) reported $1B USD in digital music sales the past quarter. That's maybe $150M just from UMG, so maybe $1/2B in royalties total/quarter. If an artist takes a few extra months to figure the rights shares, or you have a typo, payments can be stalled or lost.

Dick spoke about Jaxsta, which is a music metadata platform that displays "official" data obtained by official sources such as labels. We had liner notes in the old days that had all the info, but that's all gone. Unofficial data sprung up, like Wikipedia, Discogs, etc. but they are fan driven and prone to errors.

Mastering engineer Steve Turnidge then gave some demos of current software such as Roon, which is a metadata aggregator for handling your music files. It licenses its data from common databases like iTunes and Tidal, shows data like super liner notes and plays the music from your choice of Tidal, qobuz or locally on your device. It costs $120/yr. He also showed muso.ai, which finds credits using AI (where something like Jaxsta takes official input), and songwhip.com, which can find music from metadata.

Some final thoughts from the panel included Vickie, warning about procrastinating in collecting and submitting your metadata. Do it as part of the producing. You can lose a year's worth of royalties. Jim mentioned that the royalty pool is like a Black Box, where royalties not payable get redistributed - if you don't take your money, someone else gets your money! Also there are buyers of royalty streams, like investments. You need the metadata to be paid. Maureen pointed to a document from the P&E Wing  showing 20 basic pieces of data to collect on a project

Dick noted that Jaxsta lets you claim your credits/profile with an account, and free Pro accounts are available through 2020. He likes to call this situation the 3 Cs: Creation, Collation, and Commerce, and commerce is directly tied to metadata

A lively Q&A session finished the evening.

Our Presenters:

• Jim Rondinelli is Chief Operating Officer for Immersion Networks, Inc., a Redmond, WA based developer of audio hardware and software. A 35 year veteran of the music and technology industries, Mr. Rondinelli has been awarded several Gold and Platinum records for his work as a Producer and Engineer with several groundbreaking artists including Matthew Sweet, The Jayhawks, Wilco, Tragically Hip, Weezer and Everclear. He received Aria and Juno awards for his work as Producer and Mixer before migrating to the technology sector in 1999, originally as the SVP of Business Development for MP3.com. Prior to his work at Immersion, Mr. Rondinelli was the Global Head of Digital for Warner/Chappell Music Publishing, and led Licensing and Content Distribution for several global music services.
• Maureen Droney lives in Los Angeles; Ms. Droney is the Sr. Managing Director, Producers & Engineers Wing and Recording Technology, for the Recording Academy. A former recording engineer, Maureen has worked on GRAMMY winning recordings for artists including Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, and Santana well as well as on numerous other projects, including two Billboard Number One Dance songs. She has a degree in Broadcast Communication Arts from California State University, San Francisco, and has taught seminars on the theory and practice of recording for companies including ABC and CBS Television. She has also worked in both artist and studio management, was the longtime Los Angeles editor for Mix magazine, and has published three books related to recording. Her most recent, co-written with its subject, is Al Schmitt on the Record: The Magic Behind the Music , chronicling the life and career of the most awarded recording engineer in history.
• Dick Huey is the Head of Partnerships at Sydney-based official music credits platform Jaxsta. His 25-year music career includes management of several music artists, which led to a global head of digital role at independent record label powerhouse the Beggars Group in New York City. He is the founder of Toolshed, a digital strategy and music license acquisition consultancy. At Toolshed he created digital campaigns for hundreds of critically acclaimed music artists and dozens of the world's top independent record labels. He led Spotify's U.S. independent label license acquisition efforts prior to and during their U.S. launch in 2011, and built consulting or advisory relationships with clients including Red Bull, Tunecore, 8Tracks, Jaxsta, Paperchain, Section4, and Digital Rights Agency. He served on the board of SoundExchange on behalf of Matador Records. He is a past Executive Director and board chair of the Future of Music Coalition, in Washington DC.
• Vickie Nauman has deep experience in the intersection of music and technology, focusing her business on rights and licensing, products and experiences, and strategic business development. She founded the boutique consulting and advisory firm CrossBorderWorks and has a portfolio of forward-thinking companies from large enterprise to early stage startups. Nauman's work spans music legislation, thought leadership, the entire stack of music technology, product management, music finance, partnerships, and being a subject matter expert, giving her a unique perspective on the ever-changing global landscape. A digital music pioneer, Nauman worked on licensing and product for one of the first legal digital services MusicNet (RealNetworks JV) in 2001, led strategic partnerships for connected device manufacturer Sonos (leading wireless music system), started and ran the U.S. business for global music platform 7digital, and did digital business in Europe and China as a consultant. In addition, she built one of the first DMCA-compliant services at taste-making station KEXP in Seattle. Prior to 2001, she ran marketing programs and produced live broadcasts in traditional radio in the NPR network and started out at Procter & Gamble.