To ensure that the accents and capitalization appear correctly on all channels, you must specify an appropriate spelling in the metadata fields. Our Quality Control team reserves the right to correct errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation.
- Nonstandard capitalization. Titles have to contain capital letters at the beginning of each sentence and in proper names. Each language has its own requirements in the use of capital letters. Generally speaking, full capitalization or full lowercase is not accepted unless we are talking about cacophonies, acronyms or specific cases which are previously communicated to our Support team - please, note that in cases where it is permitted distribution to some channels like iTunes might be deactivated. For further information about specific languages, check the explanations given below in this block
- Accents and required characters. All Western languages should include all appropriate accents and characters, as required by the correct spelling of each language respectively. Spelling mistakes will be only allowed if it is possible to argue any premeditation in certain contexts.
- Abbreviation. The words "Part" and "Volume" should be abbreviated as "Pt." and "Vol.".The titles that require the use of any of those two words should have the following format: "Title, Vol. X" and "Title, Pt. X" (where "X" is a number). The use of abbreviations will be mandatory when there is an homonymous topics succession in different parts, or when there is a numerical succession with same titles songs. The use of Arabic or Roman numbers can be chosen by the user, but its use will have to be consistent along the album. Preferably the expression "Pt." has to be used only for tracks and "Vol." just for albums, with the exception of the singles, where is better to omit the expression "Vol." unless it belongs to the real track title.
- Use of special characters. Special characters use (as $, ¢, ∞, ¬, _, +, =, ≠, ´‚ `, *, etc.) will not be generally accepted unless the content has been previously by the channels or there is a justified reason for their use. We recommend contacting our Support team prior to the distribution of the content to assess the formatting of the metadata in some exceptional cases. Please, note that some of that content might not be accepted by certain channels like iTunes.
- Links, emails and social media promotion. The general metadata of a release should not contain any link to web pages, email addresses, social media or similar network references. The links to promotional pages should be introduced in the profile of the user profile. References to commercial content unrelated to the artist or the release content will not be accepted in any case. When possible, avoid symbols like “#” or “@” unless there is a strong justification for their use.
- Assigning languages. The language at the album level must be the same as the one used for writing the titles. If there are various languages in the titles, the most used has to be chosen. The language at the track level should be the one used in the song. If the language does not appear in the list, the most similar one - for geographic, political or cultural proximity - must be assigned.
- Assigning no-linguistic content. If a track is instrumental or the language is invented, then it must be indicated with the option “no linguistic content”. At the album level, the language indicated must be the one of the metadata. Even if the songs are instrumental, a particular language must be selected for the album, unless the whole album uses an invented language or symbols as titles.
- Alphabet characters. Each individual metadata field can only include one specific. Some languages demand only one specific alphabet; please, check the following points for further information. For instance: if the predominant alphabet is the Western, then all the metadata must be written with it as long as there are no contradictions with specific language rules - Asian characters, for instance, would not be allowed in the same specific field (see: the title of a track).
- Side-by-side translations. Side-by-side translations are not allowed. This means, translating the title to any language and including it in its own title as a part of it. For instance: “이카루스” is correct, but “Rise 이카루스” will not be accepted.
- Layout for specific languages. Some languages might require some specific capitalization or particular use of characters. Check the list below for further information. Please note that not all languages are included in these rules; contact our Support team for more information about any which is not in this list:
- English. The titles for albums and tracks in English language should have title case format (all words are capitalized except articles and conjunctions). In addition, the first letter of the words before and after a hyphen (“-”), a slash (“/”) or a colon (“:”) and at the beginning and the end of a sentence should be capitalized. The following words should always be lowercase, unless they are part of a phrasal verb: a, an, and, as, but, for, from, nor, of, or, so, the, to, y yet, at, by, for, from, in, into, of, off, on, onto, out, over, to, up, with. For instance: “In the Still of the Night”.
- Spanish and Portuguese. For albums and tracks’ titles in Spanish and Portuguese, you can decide on either title or sentence casing, as long as the format is consistent throughout the entire album and the first letter of each sentence is uppercase and proper names are correctly capitalized. In addition, the first letter of the words before and after a hyphen (“-”), a slash (“/”) or a colon (“:”) and at the beginning and the end of a sentence should be capitalized. The following words in Spanish should always be in lower case: a, al, de, del, e, el, en, la, las, le, les, lo, los, o, para, por, un, una, y; and the following words in Portuguese should always be in lower case: a, à, ao, aos, as, às, da, das, de, das, do, dos, e, em, na, nas, no, nas, nos, o, os, ou, para, pela, pelas, pelo, pelos, pra, pro, por, um, uma.
- Scandinavian languages, French, Italian and Latin. All of these languages must be in sentence format, therefore only the first word of the sentence should have the first letter capitalized, all others must be lowercase, except in cases of proper names and / or abbreviations.
- German. German albums and tracks’ titles must use sentence case, following in this case the rules of capitalization of this language.
- Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian and Ukranian. The releases in these languages must use the Cyrillic alphabet. Transliterations are not allowed, and the titles should follow the sentence format.
- Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai. The metadata must be introduced accordingly to the original alphabet. However, the artists’ names in Chinese and Korean should be written in English or transliterated, whenever possible.
- Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Tamazight, Hindi and Urdu. Metadata in Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Tamazight, Hindi and Urdu can be chosen between Western and the original alphabet as long as they are consistently used all along the release.
- Vietnamese. The releases in Vietnamese should be written with Western characters and correctly accentuated.
- Supported languages. Language support varies from DSP to DSP. We currently support every language that iTunes supports and some more. Most DPSs only use language information for internal search engine settings and do not specify other uses in their specs. Our team adds more languages from time to time, but if they are not supported they will need to be mapped and converted to others that iTunes and other DSPs support - for instance: Basque is mapped as Spanish; Luganda and no-linguistic content as English, Cantonese as Chinese and Tamazigh as Arabic. iTunes supported languages are available on the platform - check the list on the tab 1 of your release. In case the one you need is not available, please contact our Support team.