Capacity Triangle Webinar for music creators: The Importance of Managing your Metadata: How To Get Paid and Credited Correctly

On Tuesday 28 February 2023, from 14:00 - 15:30 CET, ECSA organised a Capacity Triangle webinar for music creators: "The Importance of Managing your Metadata: How to Get Paid and Credited Correctly". 

Often without knowing, music creators do not receive proper credits and the royalties they are due for their work because of mismanaged metadata. As a creator, it is crucial to provide the correct information right from the start in order to help remedy this problem and make sure you get paid correctly.



In short, metadata includes all information that is tied to any released song or album. Examples can be song titles, the songwriters' names and their identifiers, how they are splitting the copyright between them, producer names, publishers and their identifiers, the identifier for the recording (ISRC), the name of the record label, and other data.



In this webinar, several experts gave creators the tools that will help them to ensure that they correctly transmit their metadata, and eventually get credited and paid correctly for the music they create. The experts also discussed what other stakeholders can do to make this easier for creators. 

The following speakers participated in this webinar:

•       Fiona Bevan
Board Director at Ivors Academy, Credits Due, Songwriter – United Kingdom
As well as a hit songwriter and artist, Fiona is one of the leading voices in the UK songwriting community. She is on the board of the Ivors and served on the PRS Members' Council. In 2021 she gave evidence to the UK government DCMS committee on the realities of streaming royalties and songwriters' income. She is the face of the Ivors Academy Credits Due initiative alongside ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus, and is an advocate for songwriters all over the world.   

•       Richard James Burgess                                                                                                   
President and CEO at the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) - United Kingdom
Dr. Richard James Burgess has produced, recorded, and performed on many gold, platinum, and multi-platinum albums. He was previously head of business at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. His career path includes studio musician, touring musician, recording artist, producer, manager, and label owner. He is known for his pioneering work with synthesizers, computers, sampling, EDM, New Romantics, early house music, as the inventor of the SDSV drum synthesizer and for coining the music genre terms EDM and New Romantic. He was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen’s New Year’s Honors list 2022.

•       Garrett Levin
President and CEO of The Digital Media Association (DiMA) – United States
Garrett has earned a broad experience on the topics of music licensing and copyright policy. Before working at DiMA, Garrett has served as Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property Law and Policy at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), as senior counsel to Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-VT), as an international and domestic copyright policy attorney at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, and as a litigator in private practice. 

•       Sylvain Piat
Director of Business at International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) – France
Sylvain Piat’s position includes includes Governance and Professional Rules implementation and monitoring aspects for the whole CISAC membership. He is responsible for the organisation of the CISAC Technical Committees (Business, Media and DLV). Sylvain has also worked at SACEM as Head of International Projects.

•       Moderated by: Helienne Lindvall
ECSA President, Songwriter, Musician, Credits Due, Columnist - Sweden
Helienne Lindvall is an award-winning professional songwriter, musician and columnist. She's the former Chair of the Ivor Novello Awards, Board Director of the Ivors Academy and Trustee of the Ivors Academy Trust. As former Head of Business & Songwriter relations for song data management platform Auddly/Sessions, Helienne has broad experience in Metadata management. In addition, Helienne was the Director of Business Development and Artist Relations for LANDR UK and Director of Industry Relations for rights and recording management platform VEVA Sound. 

Credits Due is an initiative that aims to make sure artists capture accurate metadata at the point of creation. The initiative was established by the Ivors Academy and the Music Rights Awareness Foundation.