Metadata errors on streaming platforms can cost you royalties, damage your artist profile, and frustrate listeners. Here is how to identify errors and what you can actually do to fix them.
Why metadata errors are harder to fix than most artists expect
Streaming platforms do not let artists directly edit their metadata. Everything displayed on Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music originates from the metadata delivered at distribution. To correct an error, you must go back to the source — your distributor — and resubmit the release with corrected metadata. The platform then accepts the updated delivery and, after a processing period, reflects the change. How straightforward this is depends on your distributor's support process and how fundamental the error is.
Types of metadata errors and what causes them
Metadata errors fall into several categories:
- Incorrect track title — often caused by typos in the original distribution submission
- Wrong artist name — capitalisation errors, missing featured artist credits, or name variants
- Missing composer and publisher credits — fields not completed at distribution or stripped during delivery
- Incorrect ISRC — code assigned by distributor but formatted incorrectly or conflicting with a previous release
- Wrong release date — affects algorithmic placement and editorial submission windows
- Genre and language miscategorisation — affects playlist recommendation and market-specific visibility
How to identify metadata errors on your releases
Audit your releases by searching for each track on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and comparing what is displayed against your original submission data. Pay particular attention to: whether your artist profile correctly aggregates all your releases under one profile, whether featured artist credits are displayed correctly, whether the track title matches your canonical title exactly, and whether composer credits appear where the platform supports them (Apple Music is the most transparent on this).
The process for correcting a metadata error
The correction process varies by distributor. Most require you to submit an update or redelivery request through their portal. For major errors — wrong artist name, wrong title — some distributors can make the change without requiring a full re-upload. For errors that affect the ISRC, the situation is more complex: changing an ISRC mid-stream can disrupt the royalty attribution history for all plays that have already been reported against the old code. In these cases, an ISRC correction must be handled carefully to avoid creating a new attribution gap.
What you cannot fix at the platform level
Even after correcting metadata at the distribution level, some historical data may not update retroactively. Streaming reports that have already been submitted to collection societies with incorrect ISRCs or missing metadata fields will not automatically correct. The royalties attributed under the incorrect data remain unmatched. Recovering these requires raising a claim with the relevant collection society and providing evidence that the plays belonged to your correctly registered work. This retrospective claims process is standard for metadata administrators.
Fixing artist profile issues on Spotify
A fragmented Spotify artist profile — where your releases appear under multiple profile variants instead of one unified page — is a metadata issue rather than a Spotify issue. It is caused by inconsistent artist name formatting across releases or distributor submissions. Spotify for Artists allows you to claim your profile and request that fragmented profiles be merged, but the underlying cause must be resolved at the distribution level to prevent new releases from continuing the fragmentation. Spotify for Artists is also the tool for updating your artist image, bio, and pick, independent of the underlying audio metadata.
When to involve a metadata administrator
For one or two isolated errors on recent releases, the self-service correction route through your distributor is usually sufficient. For catalog-wide metadata issues — systemic errors across multiple releases, ISRC problems, missing collection society registrations — the volume of work and the risk of creating new errors while fixing old ones justifies specialist support. A metadata administrator audits, corrects, and monitors systematically rather than addressing errors one at a time.
If your catalog has metadata errors that you have been putting off addressing, our free Catalog Assessment will identify the highest-priority issues and outline the most efficient path to resolution.