Maybe it’s because it’s Black Friday, but here is a double post, connecting two parts of my world: working on the rights and infrastructure that underpins how music travels, gets identified, and gets paid, and then making and releasing music using that exact infrastructure.
On the rights and infrastructure side:
This time last week I attended the in-person DDEX RDR working group meeting. This is a one of the DDEX groups quietly but relentlessly reviewing, revising and developing the language spoken through the plumbing of today’s digital music industry.
The work of the DDEX secretariat and consortium members is the reason why we have a digital music ecosystem that works: without them you don’t get clean metadata, you don’t get adequate reporting, and you definitely don’t get independent artists reaching a global audience from a laptop.
So a huge thanks as always to Vanessa Bastian and Co-chairs Rob Gruschke and Jose Antonio Delgardo for steering the RDR group through another long and detailed agenda, and keeping everyone on track in a supportive and positive atmosphere.
On the music side:
Today we released a new Two Lands track, “Blue”. Release day is always busy, but this one has seen some amazing feedback. One review said the track is “a signature style of blending acoustic piano with cool ambient electronic textures and great singing”. Sounds good to me!
Releasing “Blue” reminded me how much of the music ecosystem is held together by DDEX standards creating the language needed to pass data from to individual fields on your distributor’s website on to DSPs, reporting back to distributors, royalty processing and payments. The cycle is made up of a huge number of small, invisible things that need to work properly for a single track to reach the world.
Since we’re talking about data, this would not be complete without some, so here you go. The ISRC for Blue is UK9QE2400005.
Here’s the Spotify link. We’ve done a little video this time, and we’re very keen to see what difference this makes. Check it out, enjoy it, and let us know what you think!