What a Metadata Health Audit Can Tell You About Your Music Library
Is Your Metadata Healthy? (And How Would You Know?)
One of the interesting things about metadata is that it rarely breaks all at once.
It’s more like a few duplicate tags here. An outdated genre term there. A new catalog gets imported with a completely different taxonomy. AI-generated tags are layered on top of an older metadata structure. None of those changes seem like a big deal on their own. But over time, they add up.
Everything still appears to work, but search results aren’t quite as relevant as they used to be. Certain tracks never seem to surface. The same handful of cues keep getting placed while others quietly disappear into the catalog.
We’ve seen this pattern more times than we can count, and it usually leads to the same question: How healthy is your metadata, really?
It’s an especially important question today because AI-powered search is quickly becoming the standard for how production music is discovered, licensed, and placed. But despite all the excitement around AI, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: AI is only as good as the metadata it’s reading.
If your tags are inconsistent, incomplete, or missing the kinds of descriptors that music supervisors actually search for, AI can’t magically fill in the gaps. It simply works with what’s there.
Being AI-ready doesn’t mean replacing your metadata strategy with AI. It means building a catalog with metadata that’s consistent, structured, and detailed enough for AI-powered search to understand what makes each track unique. It’s the difference between a catalog that consistently surfaces the right music and one where great tracks are quietly overlooked.
This Is Why We Created the Library Health Audit
After years of reviewing catalogs, we realized we were asking many of the same questions every time we started working with a new client.
Eventually we thought: why not turn that process into something libraries can use before committing to a larger metadata project?
Our complimentary Library Health Audit is designed to provide an honest snapshot of where your catalog stands today, and where the biggest opportunities exist.
During the audit, we review areas like:
- Taxonomy consistency across your catalog
- Genre, mood, and usage coverage
- Metadata completeness and overall organization
- Instrumentation accuracy
- AI search readiness
- Practical recommendations that can improve discoverability
Following a brief intake conversation, we’ll review your metadata and deliver a written report outlining our findings within 5–7 business days.
A Fresh Perspective Can Go a Long Way
We’ve spent years helping music libraries organize and refine metadata at scale, including projects for companies like Epidemic Sound and Shutterstock Music, and contributing to taxonomy development for one of the world’s largest production music libraries.
After looking at tens of thousands of tracks, you start to notice the same patterns.
You also start to recognize which issues actually affect discoverability, and which ones simply make spreadsheets look untidy.
Sometimes the smallest adjustments produce the biggest improvements.
Let’s Do This
Metadata doesn’t have to be perfect but it should be intentional.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your metadata is helping your catalog or quietly holding it back, we’d be happy to take a look.
No obligation. No pressure. Just an honest assessment of where your metadata stands today, and a conversation about where it could go next.
For a limited time, We’re offering complimentary Library Health Audits to 5 production music libraries in August — delivered as a written report within 7 business days
