Why Organizing Your Music Catalog Is So Valuable 🤯

Growing as an artist is no easy task. There are years of work involved, hours of investment that you’ll never get back, along with a list of people who just won’t believe in your journey. To add to the headache, we’re also expected to keep a detailed record of our music catalog - or as I like to call it: your most valuable asset as an artist. The idea of organizing your music catalog sucks at first, but here’s why it’s so valuable to you.

Our platform, Musicspace, allows you to manage your entire music catalog in one beautiful dashboard. Store your lyrics, track files (MP3’s/WAV’s), collaborator information, ownership percentages, publishing information, cover arts, genres and moods, liner notes, quick access links, and more! You can sign up here: Musicspace.io

1. An Organized Catalog Can Make You Money 💸

One of the greatest perks of having an organized catalog is that it can actually make you money. Yeah, seriously! Here’s how:

Say for example Netflix were to approach and say, “Hey, we’d like to license your song, “Smooth Criminal”. You’d jump at the opportunity, right? But a brand simply wanting to license your music is not enough. You see, in order for a company to license your music, they required some detailed metadata.

What is Music Metadata?

Metadata simply means: Information relating to your song. For example, your lyrics, song ownership percentage, Titles, collaborator information, genres, and moods, etc.

Continued: So now that Netflix is interested in your song, you now need to send the Music supervisor (the person from Netflix who reached out to you) your track metadata. Assuming all goes well and your track is properly licensed, you can earn anywhere from $150-$200,000. Companies like Netflix will generally pay up more for a sync license in a film of theirs compared to say… A commercial from a new company.

Do you have a detailed record of all your important metadata?

But…. If you don’t have your track metadata organized for the supervisor from Netflix, they could walk away and move onto another artist who has their music metadata organized. Do not be one to lose out on thousands of dollars for simply by not having basic information organized.

2. Organization saves you headache Long-term 😢

Have you ever been in a situation whereby you needed tax forms, a bank statement or a parking ticket notice to reference? If not, the chances are, you probably needed to find at least some form of important documentation at some point in your life. We’ve all needed to.

Catalog organization is not simply a case of having things in order for the sake of it. This stuff genuinely matters for your career long term.

Let’s use another example for this point. Imagine a label reaches out to you and says they’d love to sign a song you just released to them for a period of time. Happily, you sign the agreement stating you have ownership in the song and own all the rights to the publishing interest in the song, too. But then… months later, you and your label are hit with a lawsuit for your song from a co-writer who actually produced the song.

Simply because you didn’t have the required information on song ownership, you now owe this co-writer thousands of dollars, along with legal bills that are sure to amount to hundreds or even thousands, too.

Ensuring you have detailed metadata records for all of your releases saves you the headache years from now! Invest in yourself and get organized asap.

3. Organization Benefits Your Health ❤️

Besides making you money and giving you less of a headache throughout your career, being organized actually impacts your health quite positively.
Some of the many benefits include:

• Improved sleep
• Reduced stress levels
• Improved relationships (pertaining to business in this case)
• Reduces anxiety
• Makes you more productive

4. It really isn’t hard 😇

When you begin organizing your catalog, you may run into the stress of chasing down co-writers or song files that relate to your releases. But believe me, this stress isn’t because organizing your catalog is boring or annoying, it’s simply a lack of organization from your past-self. If you had all of your metadata organized months/years ago, you never would’ve run into the problem of organizing it today.

The good news is that we all start somewhere! Right?

I had this trouble when I started my first company when I was 18. A couple years into my business, I ran into issues regarding taxes. It put me through tons of depression and stress simply because I never organized my taxes or income. I ended up being diagnosed with severe depression, all because I left something I should’ve done years ago. Thankfully, that was many years ago and I have since learned some very hard, yet rewarding lessons. The most important of which:

Be organized.

Learning to be more organized, regardless of what it may be, is a great way to exercise control over yourself. The aim is to set yourself up in such a way that you are prepared for any future shortcomings with detailed records of your movements.

5. It Makes Selling Your Catalog Simpler.

This past year investment firms have been purchasing the rights to music catalog’s left, right, and center. Music company “Reservoir Media”, for example, has acquired the rights to music catalogs from Timbaland, Migos, A Boogie With Hoodie, 2 Chainz and more. In other words, a great catalog is an incredible investment, and firms are beginning to pick up on this.

But…… as you guessed, if your catalog is not organized (cough cough Musicspace.io), then guess what? a potential purchaser won’t even touch your catalog with a 10ft pole. Lack of organization kills business deals, and we pray this never happens to you!

To Finish

I hope this article has given you some insight into why managing your music catalog is so vital to your growth both personally, and professionally, too. Organization is a simple way we can help prepare for lives many disasters, and the choice to face them in an organized manner or not lays entirely in our hands.