Monetize › Rights & royalties admin
MusicBrainz
The open music metadata encyclopedia: canonical IDs for artists, releases and recordings that downstream databases rely on. Claiming and correcting your entries is free metadata hygiene.
- Best for
- Clean canonical metadata that downstream databases inherit. Artists, labels and catalog managers who want accurate, structured and reusable metadata—especially for releases, alternate versions, collaborations and detailed personnel credits.
- Skip if
- Never — bad metadata haunts you for years. You need royalty registration, publishing administration, neighboring-rights collection or guaranteed corrections across Spotify and other DSPs. MusicBrainz does not replace your distributor, PRO, MLC registration or official artist dashboards.
- First move
- Check your artist entry exists and is correct. Search for your artist name before creating anything. Claim nothing—MusicBrainz has no conventional artist-verification system—but create an editor account, identify yourself as the artist or representative in the edit notes, then correct the artist profile and add releases, identifiers, URLs and detailed credits with supporting sources.
- Watch out
- Anyone can edit the database, and some changes enter a community voting or review process. Follow its detailed style guidelines, distinguish recordings from compositions and release groups from individual editions, and avoid creating duplicate artists or releases. Contributions become public data, and inclusion does not establish copyright ownership or generate royalties.
- Reach
- Established
- When
- Useful from day one.
- Based in
- United States