Something happened in the UK that everyone should be aware of. One publisher and a cross section of industry groups joined with the UK Intellectual Property Office to announce the UK Industry Agreement on Music Streaming Metadata. This broad-based effort adopts common principles to deliver metadata to streaming services that the organizers hope will result in songwriters getting both credit and payment when their music is played on streaming services.

That one publisher is Hipgnosis Songs Fund and the groups are Association of Independent Music (AIM), British Phonographic Industry (BPI), The Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) on behalf of its digital music service members (“DSPs”), Featured Artists Coalition (The FAC), The Ivors Academy, Music Managers Forum (MMF), Music Producers Guild (MPG), Music Publishers Association (MPA), Musicians’ Union (MU), Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL) and PRS for Music.

This isn’t the usual kitchen sink list of the usual suspects–each has important and slightly different compliance standards to implement the agreed-upon “core data set” of metadata. The fact that there is an agreed-upon core data set is in itself quite an accomplishment. The public agreement to execute implementation of that metadata standard is equally ground-breaking.

The fact that this was done under the auspices of the UK Government has an encouraging tone. And an undertone of “fix it or we’ll fix it for you” because every now and then the sharp elbows of the private sector creates such unfairness that the government must get involved to protect small businesses like songwriters and artists.

As the metadata agreement states, “The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) will play an ongoing role as supervisor and facilitator. It will facilitate and monitor implementation of this agreement, ensure progress is reported, and attempt to broker a resolution to any issues which arise. It will provide formal updates to government ministers and industry representatives.” I’m optimistic that all these players can play nicely so hopefully a voluntary agreement will mean something positive for once. More carrot and less stick. And more money for songwriters.

Everyone should read the actual agreement which is very concise and easy to understand. There are simple steps for streaming services, artists, songwriters, publishers, CMOs, record labels and producers to take to improve the metadata. It is important to note–even the largest corporations in commercial history–that we live in a round world. There is considerable overlap between the services that operate in the UK with dominant services that operate in the US (and other countries around the world), publishers who operate in the UK and the US, songwriters and artists whose repertoire is performed in the UK and the US, and so on. This core data set is one step away from a minimum viable data set that must be met before recordings can be commercially released–if they can do it for a ham sandwich at the supermarket, they can do it for songs.

And you’ll notice what’s missing from the Core Data Set–the Harry Fox Agency Song Code and the MLC Song Code, two useless data sets outside of the US if not outside of the MLC and HFA.

It’s worth connecting one other dot. The one individual publisher that signed on to the UK standard was Hipgnosis, and that company’s CEO Merck Mercuriadis gave the keynote at our University of Georgia Artist Rights Symposium III last November. Merck addressed this very point:

One of the things we have a real issue with on behalf of the songwriting community is data. It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you are Taylor Swift or Nick Cave, when your song goes up on Spotify there is an ISRC [International Standard Recording Code] embedded in the metadata and it gets paid every time it is played. It may not get paid enough but the track will get paid.

The ISWC [International Standard (Musical) Work Code], which is the corresponding code for songwriters, and does not go into Spotify or Apple or any other streaming service. It would be such a simple thing if it did, because what happens right now and this is going to give you the answer as to why the ISWC code doesn’t go into the metadata, is because at the end of the month Spotify is going to send the [collecting] societies a list of everything someone pushed play and that society is going to take that list of songs, which is a very laborious thing, and it’s going to match that list to everything in their database and they send Spotify a bill for their share of that song consumption.

On average something more than 30% to 40% ends up in black box because people haven’t been able to match the songs, there’s human error that takes place every step of the way. And of course, black box gets shared by market share so the beneficiaries of black box, you know who they are, love that system so they are not encouraging anyone to ensure that ISWC codes are embedded in metadata.

Yet if you ask them to release the record without the producer contract, they would tell you you’re crazy because at that moment in time they have real liability yet they won’t wait. Their argument as to why they are not fighting for ISWC codes to go up is that it would slow the process down. It is more important to put music up than to ensure that songwriters get paid.

This is the foolishness that we’re dealing with.

Maybe a little less foolishness today.