MusicTech Insights #4 | Curated by Amanda Schupf

The Music Metadata Conundrum: Can there ever really be one source of truth?

Hi, I’m Amanda Schupf. I’ve spent years watching money disappear into black holes because two databases can’t agree on who owns what. Metadata isn’t sexy, but it’s literally the skeleton the entire modern music industry hangs on. Without clean, connected metadata there is no accurate royalty payment, no proper sync licensing, no trustworthy AI training data, and no real discovery. The dream of one single, global, always-correct “source of truth” has been chased for decades.

Spoiler: as long as humans are involved (and they always will be), perfection is impossible. But we’re finally seeing real momentum toward something good enough.

Jaxsta's early leap toward connecting music’s metadata dots

Way back in 2022 – before “metadata infrastructure” was cool – Jaxsta launched one of the first serious attempts to link musical works to recordings across publishing and labels. A quiet but important step that’s still paying dividends for rights holders and fans alike.

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MusicInfra raises $5M to tackle metadata complexity

Fresh funding and the addition of industry veteran Jules Parker show that MusicInfra is going all-in on solving the hardest parts of metadata at scale. They understand it’s not just a tech problem – it’s a people and collaboration problem.

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SESAC and GMR join Songview to unify copyright data

The fact that SESAC and GMR are now sitting at the same table as ASCAP and BMI inside Songview is one of the biggest pro-collaboration moves we’ve seen from the PRO world in years. Fragmentation is slowly losing.

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Mogul shows what broken metadata really costs

In less than a year Mogul has already uncovered millions in missing royalties for artists and managers. Nothing illustrates the real-world price of messy metadata better than cold, hard cash that never reached its owner.

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Water&Music put the metadata problem in context

Last year’s deep-dive report from Water&Music remains the best map of where capital is flowing into metadata, rights management and music-tech infrastructure. It’s required reading for anyone who thinks this is “just a data issue”.

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Exploring the Idea of a Shared, Open Layer for Music Metadata

An academic paper that dares to ask: what if we borrowed ideas from libraries and publishing and built one open, authoritative, shared metadata layer for the entire industry? The concept is still waiting for its builder.

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