In the dust, or strictly for royalty accounting purposes. Unless, however, you design the digital booklets similar to an album sleeve.

It is quite ironic isn't it that as technology has become more capable of supporting a better way of collating and storing all the information required for everything from stack control to royalty entitlement in one place there seems to be a greater fragmentation of it? The more cynical amongst us might conclude that the labels like it that way - the more confusion the easier it is to defer payment.

I think it is significant the effort that PPL has been making to reverse this situation and MPG are very pleased to be discussing ways to consolodate this further.

Beyond that however, the biggest mistake that has been made since CDs were introduced and carried forward into downloads has been to underestimate the value of sleeve notes and extra information to go with the music that is purchased. Credits are of course part of that.

Credits must be included in the metadata of digital music files! At the very least, it provides recognition of the work of the people involved, which is extremely important, and is an insult if neglected. I don't know of any other creative endeavour where the contributors are un-recognised - just look at the list of credits displayed at the end of every movie these days.

Credits also serve as accurate records for the calculation of royalty payments due to those entitled to them.

As stated above, Allmusic, Wiki, Discogs, and AlbumCredits can be inaccurate, and anyway, the source should be the producer of the record, not some random fan or any other badly informed sources. The producer is the only person on the session who knows exactly who did what.

Thats an excellent comment Natureboy and one I was trying to allude to in my previous comment. As Mick says every other creative endeavour takes great pains in crediting all the creative members involved yet our very own industry has over night forgotten how important on so many levels this is and like so many other aspects let it slip by the wayside. How can we expect anybody to respect the work we do if we do not respect it ourselves by not demanding that we be credited directly?

An interesting thread to this is emerging. I have always contended that music in general is essentially a social activity and making music benefits greatly from collaborative efforts. Although most of us don't actively seek recognition for what we do as our primary motivation, it is only human nature to feel better about what we do and therefore perform better, if at the very least we are acknowledged. Of course the "fame led" culture that has grown up around reality TV shows has done little to encourage collaborative music making because the actual talent is difficult to identify!

Is this Sony-owned facility the only method for including meta-data?

Mick Glossop has asked me to copy and paste my recent blog post (from http://www.mikehillier.me/Mike_Hillier/Blog/Entries/2010/3/6_Credit_Crunch.html), so I will. But first I'd like to address Tony Cousins' point. Credits as CD text aren't as important as the metadata on an mp3/AAC/etc is, since presumably if you've got the CD you've also got the booklet that comes with it. (Copy from blog begins here) As a teenager in the 90s I used to enjoy flicking through the CD booklet as I listened to the album. I’d make a point of reading all the lyrics if they were provided, I’d pay close attention to who had written all of the songs, who had played on each song and who recorded it and where it was recorded. I even liked reading through the thank-you’s and trying to see if I recognised any names, or instrument manufacturers from the lists. Many people might think this information is useless, but I devoured it. I loved spotting guest appearances, or discovering that one of my favourite songs was a cover, and I’d make an effort to hear the original. So when Kula Shaker released a cover of “Hush”, I was that saddo at school pointing out to everyone that it wasn’t a Deep Purple cover, but had been written and recorded originally by Joe South - and I knew that South had performed on Blonde On Blonde (yes, I was always a geek). When Ocean Colour Scene released “Moseley Shoals” I loved knowing that it was a nod to the Muscle Shoals recording studio. I got a little thrill seeing the name Ben Hillier (no relation, but I still felt proud) as assistant engineer (on an early Blur CD I think), and again when I started seeing his name as engineer (Graham Coxon’s Golden D) and then producer (Think Tank). I absorbed this stuff so much that when I first heard Kaiser Chief’s on the radio while in the Music Tech office my first comment was that it sounded like Blur and was probably recorded by Stephen Street - something that for a short while sparked producer interviews in Music Tech, including one with Stephen Street about his recordings with Kaiser Chiefs. Now as a recording engineer myself I am proud of every credit I receive, just as I am with every byline I get in Music Tech Magazine. I want people to know who I’ve worked with, even if it is frequently only as Assistant Engineer. And I still want to know who worked on the albums that I buy, and what albums the engineers and producers I work with have worked on before. The iTunes revolution however has pretty much killed this off, yet it would be incredibly easy for distributors to add credits as metadata to the files. I’ve moaned about this to friends for ages, arguing for some kind of definitive online database with credits and it now seems I’m not alone. The UK Music Producers Guild recently blogged about the lack of credits in digital deliveries, which provoked a considerable response and will hopefully provide a rallying point for musicians, engineers, producers, song-writers, studio owners, and even the person whose cover art it is. We need to convince the big digital distributors to start including this as metadata on downloads. Mike Hillier