Pleased to MEAD You: Introducing the New DDEX Standard ‘Media Enrichment and Description’

Originally Aired October 10, 2019 Digital Data Exchange (DDEX) is introducing a new music metadata standard, MEAD (Media Enrichment and Description). MEAD was designed to enable the communication of data that does not appear in the Electronic Release Notification (ERN) message. The latter is solely focused on the core data about releases being provided to DSPs by labels and distributors — at its simplest, this is data including artist name, track title, duration and some other contributors. The MEAD standard, on the other hand, will support the communication of different types of data about the releases, aimed specifically at facilitating better marketing and at improving the consumer experience for search and discovery. This type of data would include more detailed information about the compositions (songs) on the releases, much richer contributor data (including such roles as producers and engineers), artist nicknames, historic chart positions, focus track data, journalistic material, and much more. In this session, DDEX Secretariat members Mark Isherwood and Niels Rump discuss the new standard, and how it can help the music industry better reach consumers, especially as voice-activated search becomes more prevalent.