Alan Cross

is an internationally known broadcaster, interviewer, writer, consultant, blogger and speaker. In his 40+ years in the music business, Alan has interviewed the biggest names in rock, from David Bowie and U2 to Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters. He’s also known as a musicologist and documentarian through programs like The Ongoing History of New Music.

Alan Cross has 39676 posts and counting. See all posts by Alan Cross

2 thoughts on “A Plea for Metadata for Music. What’s Wrong with You Label People?

  • This drives me crazy too, but I think people like you and I are in the minority here. Most people don’t care. It’s a similar principle as to the reason why terrestrial radio insists on playing the same songs over and over again, which is something you yourself have explained on several occasions. I (and everyone I personally know) hates the limited airwave playlists. But, as you’ve stated before, we are apparently in the minority. Most people listen to the radio for different reasons than we do. Similarly, most people don’t care about details like album, songwriter, year, etc. All the want is artist and (occasionally) the name of the song.

    Reply
  • It gets worse. Labels are so lazy that they don’t even give a crap if the poor intern they have assigned to handle metadata when they hand off the files to streaming services is right. Instead of adopting a best practices standard, say Music Brainz, they pull amazing crap: wrong titles for songs, misspelled album names, cockamamie “featuring” junk, etc. As a Last FM user, you noticed immediately when Spotify/Deezer/Songza/etc started polluting the collected info.

    -G.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.