How to Prepare a Label-Ready Demo (Mixing, Mastering and Metadata)
You’ve just spent months working on your demo, and you are now ready to mix and master the demo, but how much should you do? Should you even master the demo? Won’t the labels have someone who can master the demo? What should the mix sound like? Is it worth it to add metadata to the demo? If you do add metadata, what metadata should you include? This article will help you answer these questions. If you are looking to start submitting to labels, this article will help you present the best demo possible.
Mixing and Mastering
Before submitting your demo to a label, you should try to get your demo most of the way there. The general idea is to get your song 95% finished. Your goal is to send the best demo to a label you can. If you can, you should be able to do the mixdown yourself. But mixing is as much of an art as it is a science, and it is not for everyone. Also, the demo should be mastered. Labels often provide mastering services, and there are also third-party mixing and mastering services you can use as well. Use the label’s mastering services to help with mastering your track.
Some labels offer mixing and mastering services that can make the demo the best it can be. We offer stem mixing and mastering services for your demo. Our engineers will use your stems to rebalance and optimize each component from the mix.
Metadata
It is important to include metadata with your songs. It is important to have accurate information for your track. Metadata is also important to credit the people who worked on your track properly, and is important for discoverability on platforms like Spotify. Metadata can be added in many ways, such as through your DAW, players such as iTunes and through online tools.
There are hundreds of tags included in the two main types of metatag containers (ID3v1 and ID3v2). The tags include various information such as title, artist, track number, songwriter credits and more. There are three main categories of meta tags.
Descriptive
This includes information about the track and is the most visible metadata that a listener would see. They include information such as:
Title
Artist
Track number
Cover art
Main genre
And more
Ownership and performing rights metadata
Making can be a collaborative process. From songwriters, lyricists, producers, performing artists and audio engineers, many people could assist a song in getting to the end. This category of metadata deals with making sure the people who worked on the track is properly credited. For many people, these credits are how they get their name out in the music industry.
These credits are also important to make sure that whoever worked on the track is properly documented for the purposes of revenue sharing. Depending on contracts, not knowing who worked on the track could be the cause of many headaches in the future. They also work as a sort of B2B promotion space for the people behind the scenes who work on a track.
Recommendation metadata
These tags are not purely factual information about the track but instead describe, subjectively, the feel and tone of the track and how it relates to other songs. This metadata has tags to describe the mood and genre of the song. It also includes generative genre tags and song similarity scores. They are useful for discoverability for people who are looking for a song that feels similar to another song.
Conclusion
When submitting a demo, there are things that many new and inspiring artists do not consider when starting to enter the music industry. Remember to present the best demo you can to labels, and that means mixing and mastering your demo will help improve your chances of success.
Your demo should also have the proper metadata. Proper track information and credits can help in many ways. It can help with discoverability on services like Spotify. It can also help with making sure the people who helped work on your demo are credited properly.
Defined Sound Records provides both stereo mastering services and stem mix and mastering services. If you are looking to get your track to the next level, purchase one of our mixing and mastering services and let our engineers help you.