I often get asked, “If I post my music on Broadjam, can I sell my music?” As you know, there are many ways to distribute your music on Broadjam. You can sell downloads from your profile or your own Broadjam hosted URL, and you can submit to Film and TV opportunities. There are also many ways to get exposure on Broadjam. However, without populating all of your songs with detailed metadata, they probably won’t be found, and they probably won’t be sold.

What do I mean? Go to your profile page and click Edit button next to your Songs. Then click the Edit button next to any one of your individual songs. You will see a list of “Metadata” fields that surround a song, including Primary and Secondary Genres, Subject Matter, Tempo, Moods, Lyric Credits, Story of the Song, etc. Simply put, metadata is data about data. It is the information that identifies your song.

So if a fan is searching for a specific characteristic of a song on Broadjam, they select the appropriate Metadata from the drop down fields in the search engine. For example, let’s say a fan is looking for a Country-Rock song about war. They would select Country-Rock from the Primary Genre dropdown and Political & Social – War from the Subject Matter 1 drop down. As of today, this search returns eight songs. If your songs do not have Genre and/or Subject Matter Metadata, it will not appear in these search results, even if it met the criteria. This is critical information for anyone looking for your songs.

A similar search engine is provided to Destination Providers (music supervisors, publishers, labels, etc.), who determine which songs are selected for our Delivery listings. When you submit a song to a Film & TV destination, your song is put into a library with all of the other submissions. Within the library, Destination Providers often search for very specific characteristics, such as songs that are 120 beats per minute, male vocal and Country. If the Metadata you have attached to your song meets their search criteria, your song will appear closer to the top of the presented list. All songs are returned and listed, as this is a sorting tool rather than a search mechanism. However, if you have submitted songs without the appropriate metadata, your songs will be sent to the bottom of the list. Of course, other criteria are considered, including peer reviews and the Providers opinion, but metadata is the most critical. Providers are most likely to search by specifics.

To conclude, spend a little time entering the metadata for all of your songs. Whether it’s on Broadjam, or any other site, metadata is an absolute necessity for hosting music online.

Roy