Collection of Studio Metadata

The DDEX standard that provides a file format that is a uniform mechanism for capturing, storing and communicating “recording information” is the Recording Information Notification Standard (RIN). Recording information is any information relating to participants including roles (for example, performers, composers, engineers), creations (for example, musical works), instrumentation (for example, keyboards, violin, bass drum) and equipment information (for example, type of microphones, type of mixing desk). The RIN standard file format can travel with the sound files themselves between studios – including any places where music is being recorded, mixed or mastered – and eventually to companies that make use of such information for when the final recording is released.

The text of the Recording Information Notification standard with detailed explanations and advise about how to go about an implementation is available on the Knowledge Base.

The process of creating a recording is complex and iterative, with many production stages between the initial capturing of sound and the release of a finished recording. Every stage in this cycle can lead to new audio creations, be they a new composition, a new guitar track, a new mix and so on. In each of these “studio events”, there are a number of metadata elements that may be worth capturing. These pieces of information are important for several reasons, including providing attribution (credits) for everyone that participated in the studio event and ensuring that royalties, where due, are allocated to the correct people. Similarly, the richer the data that is eventually provided to retailers, the better they can market the products which can potentially increase the audience and, thus, the revenue generated.

RIN is designed for machine-to-machine communication. It is not designed to be read by humans. Interpretation of RIN XML files will be performed by many front-end processor systems, including digital audio workstations and metadata collection applications.