Disagreeing with Distrokid: A Mastering Engineer’s Perspective

Here’s why you should embed your ISRC codes and other metadata in your WAV files.

Distrokid says this is a waste of time. It’s not. It’s a good practice to include all pertinent info into your WAV files which includes the ISRC code, BPM, where you got any cleared samples from, who the songwriter was, who the performing artists were, who produced, who tracked the audio, who mixed and who mastered the record. Also, including dates and even locations can be helpful.

Your files aren’t irrelevant once you upload them to Distrokid. You’re not going to just delete them after you do this. They are the archived masters at that point. The cleanest, uncompressed, unprocessed masters you have from your mastering engineer. Now, it’s true that the streaming services discard (ignore) this data, which is a ridiculous practice in my humble opinion. But what happens when a publisher wants to buy the rights to this music down the road and you need to send the source files and they want to know some of this info? What happens when you want to copy the lyrics of your song and post/share them somewhere? What happens when you become frustrated with Distrokid and abandon them for another distributor? What happens 5 years down the road when you can’t remember exactly who all performed on a song you released or what studio is was recorded in? What happens when you pass away and your heirs become the owners of your catalog? All of the pertinent information that any of these situations require can simply be read from the embedded data in the WAV file if you’ve included it. All of it. Your mastering engineer (if they are legitimate) will be able to easily add all of this information if you provide it to them. And the best time to do that is when that information is fresh in your head. Take the time. It’s not a waste, in my opinion.

-Dave