How to enter artist, composer and other names so your music shows up correctly everywhere

Everyone who worked on your release is a contributor: the artist, the composer, the producer, the publisher. How you type their names decides whether listeners find your music, whether credits show up correctly and whether everyone gets paid. Stores are strict about this, so a small mistake can mean your release lands on the wrong artist page or gets rejected.

Contributors and roles

Every name you enter is a contributor: a person (real or an alias) or a company. For each release or track, you give each contributor a role, such as recording artist, composer or producer. That way you only type a name once and use it in every role and on every release, which keeps your names consistent and saves you time. See Contributor Roles for all the roles you can choose from.

Figure 1. Contributors and their roles on a track.

Note the difference with the artist name on your cover. The cover and the store page show how the main artist is presented. The contributors are listed separately, one by one, so that stores can search, sort and credit them correctly.

What counts as a contributor name?

A contributor name is always the name of a person, band or company. It never describes a style, a project, a mood or what someone did.

A name that happens to contain a word like "project" or "style" is fine, as long as it is the real name of the act. Alan Parsons Project, Dubstylers and Four Shades Of Love are all correct.

One contributor per entry

Never combine several people or companies in one name. Enter each of them as a separate contributor, and add "featuring" artists as their own contributor with the right role.

Figure 2. Split combined names, unless the act really uses the combined name.

The exception: acts that are known under a combined name, such as Simon & Garfunkel, Katrina & The Waves, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five or Warner/Chappell North America Ltd. Not sure? Check how the act is listed on Apple Music or Wikipedia.

Various Artists

For compilations with many artists you can use Various Artists. Abbreviations such as "VA" are not allowed. These translations are accepted:

Splitting names into fields

You enter every contributor name in three fields. This lets stores sort names correctly in every country, for example "Steiner, Peter".

Figure 3. One name, three fields.

• Name1: first name(s), including middle names and titles such as "Sir". For bands starting with "The", put "The" here.
• Name2: a nickname, and nothing else. Leave it empty if there is none.
• Name3: the last name, including prefixes such as "van" or "de". For bands, orchestras and companies, the whole name goes here.

You can also add the birth and death year (for example 1756-1811, or leave it empty if you do not know) and the artist country (see below).

Nicknames

Type nicknames without quotation marks. Each store adds the quotation marks that fit its language, so the same name can appear as Paolo "Pee Wee" Durante in English or Paolo „Pee Wee“ Durante in German.

If an artist is known by a nickname only, it goes in Name3. If the nickname is part of a band name, the whole band name goes in Name3.

Spelling, capitals and initials

• Use normal capitals, unless the artist deliberately writes the name differently, like will.i.am.
• Be consistent. Use exactly the same spelling, capitals and punctuation on every release. A different spelling can create a second artist page.
• Initials are capitals followed by a full stop, with a space between them: J. S. Bach (Name1: J. S., Name3: Bach).
• Dutch prefixes such as van, van der and van de are written in full and in lower case after a first name or initial: T. van Lee. Without a first name, the prefix starts with a capital: Van Lee. Only use v/d if you really do not know whether it is "van der" or "van de".

Artist country

Choose the country the artist comes from in the list. Behind the scenes, we deliver it as a two-letter country code, such as NL, US or AU.

More information

• Contributor Roles
• All Metadata articles