In the digital age of music, songwriters, producers, engineers, artists, session musicians and other creators deserve to be easily recognized so they can get the praise they deserve for crafting the music we listen to every day.
Song credits have always been an essential part of the music experience. Previously, they were included in CD booklets and on the backs of vinyl records and cassettes.
Back in the day, you could just flip over a vinyl record sleeve to see who engineered the song, who wrote the song, what was sampled and who played the drum part. CD sleeves also have this information, as well as the songwriter’s publishing companies, the producers and much more. A lot of this can be wonky and may not interest the casual fan, but some connections can be really fun to make.
As digital music services took over as the leading way to enjoy music, not everything has been brought from the analog world to the digital one: credits have been one of the most missed features when listening to music on digital devices.
After bringing lyrics booklets to the streaming age with synced lyrics distributed to many music platforms, credits are next in line for digitalization.
But first, the music industry needs to tackle its long-neglected metadata issues. When it comes to music, metadata refers to all the information which describes a song file, such as the name of the song, artist, songwriter, producer, release date, and more.
Too often, music recordings and songs are not linked with the proper metadata to identify and credit the creators and contributors. This results in inefficient processes and incorrect compensation for creators and rights holders, hurting everyone who makes a living out of music.
Missing and wrong metadata is a problem which has plagued the music industry for many years, leaving an estimated billions on the table unpaid to music creators.
That’s why we at Musixmatch have decided to do something about it.
What if you could browse the names of all the professionals involved in the creation of a song, while the music plays? That’s exactly what Musixmatch enables you to do now.
Using our expertise with time-synced lyrics, we’ve just built in time-synced credits to make music discovery a seamless part of the listening experience.
The new Musixmatch player lets you discover various performers, songwriters and producers collaborating on a song, all while you listen to it. The feature is going to roll out to more people over the coming weeks.
Song credits open the door to an all new way of discovering music. Now you can browse songs by looking for the producer that makes beats you can’t get enough of, or the songwriter whose lyrics move your heart.
Musixmatch Pro already has music credits data from more than 120k music publishers and more than 500k artists, big and small. On top of that, many labels are already managing lyrics and credits directly through our platform.
Thanks to our committed community we also have a team of Specialists and Curators who consistently review credits to make sure they’re correct.
All of that together is what makes Musixmatch Pro a unique tool in the music industry, bringing us one step closer to becoming the official platform for verified music credits on the market.
Designed by artists, for artists, Musixmatch Pro is the go-to destination for lyrics and credits management.
As a music creator or representative (label, artist manager, publisher) you can join Musixmatch Pro and get control over your credits, making them the official source for everyone.
Your credits will be distributed to Google and shared across key music industry entities such as labels, publishers and streaming services.
We’re working on integrating more and more partners with up-to-date credits data so you can fix your credits once and for all, and make sure they’re shared everywhere, all from the same platform.
As a music creator you can build a creator profile which showcases everything you’ve worked on and who you’ve worked with. Think of it as an online resume, like an IMDB page or LinkedIn profile for music creators that artists and anyone who collaborates with them (producers, engineers, songwriters, musicians, etc) can all have their own version of.
All your credits, verified and trustable for everyone.
Missing, incomplete, or incorrect metadata makes it difficult to link songs to their creators and contributors. With Musixmatch Pro, you can create your official music portfolio to showcase all the songs you worked on and who you worked on them with.
Sounds like a lot of work? No worries, we do our best to collect all the information possible and let you check in and see that everything is as you want it to be.
Sign up on Musixmatch Pro and start managing your credits today
Giving credit where credit is due: Introducing Credits in Musixmatch Pro was originally published in Musixmatch Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
