About
Who's behind this site
Metadata Style Guidelines is run by Moody. He runs OneKindMedia and Spare Music, a music distributor, and specializes in music metadata and the style guides that digital service providers (DSPs) like Spotify and Apple Music publish.
Distribution work means seeing first-hand how small metadata details, such as a featured artist typed into a title, a version tag after a dash or a mistyped ISRC, turn into rejections, split artist profiles or missing royalties. This site collects the published rules in one place and turns them into checks you can run before you deliver.
What we do here
Sourced guides →
Answers to the questions that hold up releases: rejections, featured artists, ISRCs and UPCs, version titles, explicit tags, AI disclosure and per-store rules. Each rule links to the source that published it.
Free Metadata Checker →
Paste release metadata and get each issue, the suggested fix and the rule's source.
Catalog Health Audit →
A rules-based review of a whole catalog's identifiers, credits and registration fields, with a prioritized fix list.
How we work
- Sources over opinions. We only state a rule when a platform, distributor or standards body has published it, and we link to that page.
- Rules change. Store guidelines are updated without notice. Each guide shows the date it was checked; your distributor's review is the final word.
- Not legal advice. Guidance on rights, covers and AI disclosure is practical, not legal advice.
Have a release coming up, or a catalog that needs a look?