To provide content to our partners efficiently Symphonic must conform to partner content formatting and style guides. Please become as familiarized as possible with the following:
In order for your release to be accepted by the Digital Service Provider once delivered, we summarize below the most common and important guidelines. There are many more but we will only touch on the most common ones. Adhering to these guidelines is necessary to ensure that content is easily discovered and presented accurately to help eliminate user confusion and complaints. Following this style guide will help ensure that content goes live on all digital service providers and will reduce the effort and time needed for corrections.
These must be followed 100%. If you have any doubts or questions please create a ticket and we can help further understand.
Title Capitalization
For English content, titles must not be in all capitals, all lower case, or random casing. Proper formatting is Title Capitalization in which the first letter of each word is capitalized.
Example (errors in red):
RELEASE TITLE - Incorrect, All Caps
release title - Incorrect, All Lowercase
Release title - Incorrect, sentence casing
Release Title - Correct
*Spanish and Portuguese content can choose either sentence or title casing
**Swedish, French and Italian follow sentence casing
***German content follows sentence casing AND the nouns are capitalized
****Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian albums and track titles should be submitted in a sentence case format.
Foreign Languages
Spanish, Swedish, French, Italian, Portuguese
These languages do not have to have the English translation. Translations are OPTIONAL for these languages. If you do not want translations to show up on sites instead of the Spanish or French language then DO NOT fill out the English Translation field. You can use transliterated (phonetic) or English translations if you wish. Do not put the same text in the title and the translation field. Swedish, French and Italian follows sentence casing while Spanish can follow either sentence or title casing.
Slavic
Languages such as Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian that is considered Slavic languages must use the native Cyrillic text in the title field and the literal English translation in the translation field. Do not use Phonetics or transliterated text for Slavic languages. Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian albums and track titles should be submitted in a sentence case format. This also applies to Greek content.
TRANSLATIONS FOR THIS CONTENT ARE ONLY REQUIRED BY ITUNES. IF YOU WISH TO SEND NON TRANSLATED CONTENT OF THIS LANGUAGE THEN YOU WILL NEED TO CREATE 2 RELEASES. ONE FOR ITUNES ONLY THAT HAS TRANSLATIONS AND ONE FOR ALL OTHER SITES NOT ITUNES THAT DOES NOT HAVE TRANSLATIONS
Arabic
Album titles, track titles, and artist names must be in Arabic or Farsi, in the title and name fields for local content. Use the transliterated (phonetic) version of the artist's name in the English translation fields.
Korean content no longer allows side-by-side translations. The title must be in the Korean and English translation fields in literal English translation. No phonetics.
** For Hebrew We do not currently distribute this content to iTunes
*** For Indian/Bollywood We do not currently distribute this content to iTunes
**** For Chinese we are currently not delivering this content to iTunes.
******ANY AND ALL OTHER LANGUAGES NOT LISTED SHOULD BE CONSIDERED TO UTILIZE NATIVE LANGUAGE IN TITLE FIELD AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION IN TRANSLATION FIELD
Artist Roles
SEO terms such as Christmas Hits, Sleep Music, Music for Concentration, Chillout, etc., must not be used as artist names. Products with artist names that appear to be intended to mislead or confuse users may be rejected and/or removed from Digital Service Providers. Violation of this rule could result in content being removed and/or your account disabled.
Various Artists
Various Artists are designated for only 4 or more Primary Artists. If your release has 1, 2 or 3 Primary Artists then they must be listed out at the release level and Various Artists should NOT be selected. Featuring Artists and Remixers are not considered Primary Artists.
For more information click HERE
Featuring Artists
Featuring Artists are artists that are not primary that are to have performed on the release in some way. Ultimately the role of Primary or Featuring comes down to any agreement made between the collaborating artists. AN ARTIST CAN NOT BE BOTH PRIMARY AND FEATURED ON THE SAME TRACK
For more information click HERE
Primary Artists
The main performing artist must be listed as Primary on all content. At least one Primary Artist must be listed on all content. Full, standard artist name spellings must be used for all main performing artists.
For more information click HERE
Compound Artist
If artists are collaborating under their normal artist names and are not forming a new group, you must list each artist separately. If the performing artist is 2 separate artists who have collaborated then they must be listed individually. Artists can not be listed as "Artist A x Artist B" or "Artist A vs. Artist B."
For more information click HERE
Remixer
If an Artist has remixed a song by another Artist then they are not deemed Primary or Featuring. The original performing artist roles stay the same. So if the original track had a Primary and/or a Featuring artist then those roles stay the same on the remix except a remixer role is added for the artist who has performed the remix.
***SEO terms such as Sleep Music, Music for Concentration, Chill, Chillout, etc., must not be used as artist names. Products with artist names that appear to be intended to mislead or confuse users may be rejected and/or removed from Digital Service Providers. Violation of this rule could result in content being removed and/or your account disabled.
Explicit / Clean
If a track contains explicit or curses words you must mark it on the release level and on each track that contains the explicit content. Even if the track contains no vocals but the title of the track is deemed Explicit then the track must be marked Explicit.
For more information read HERE
Release Cover Art
- Covert art must be a 3000 x 3000 pixels (square) image that is 72 dpi and in the RGB color format. Must not be blurry, contain store logos/links or nudity.
- Don’t use generic art templates or art that doesn’t match the album you’re delivering.
- The image must be unique to the release. Do not use one image for multiple releases.
For more information on what can and can not be in a cover art click HERE
Release / Track Titles
If there are more than one as it is a Volume or a Part It will need to be stylized as "Release Title, Vol. 1" or "Release Title, Pt. 1"
Each track title must be unique. Track designations such as Live or Instrumental, etc go in the Mix version field.
The standard, original version of a track must not include any additional information in the track title. For example, titles must not include Original Mix, Album Version, Original Version, etc.
For a single, the Track title and Release title must be the exact same including all parentheses and mix versions.
- proper format is "Release Title (feat. Artist A) [Artist B Remix]"
For more information click HERE
Lyrics
- Follow traditional English grammar rules with regard to capitalization.
- There should be no periods or commas at the end of any lyric line.
- Currently, spoken word/conversational content within a song should not be transcribed.
- Lyrics sung in languages different from the primary language of the song should be transcribed in the language in which they are sung, not phonetically.
For detailed information on Lyrics please review in-depth HERE
Karaoke
Release Title: Believer (Originally Performed by Imagine Dragons) [Instrumental Version]
Track Title: Believer (Originally Performed by Imagine Dragons)
Mix Version: Instrumental Version
If making a release wherein there are backing vocals (self-recorded, no samples) then you would change the release title and mix version field to Karaoke Version.
You can include both the instrumental and "karaoke" version on the same release but the release title will remain [Karaoke Version]
Primary Artist MUST be the creator of content and original performing artist can in no way be tagged as primary, featuring or remixer.
Absolutely no portion of audio from the original track can be used. Must be a "cover" essentially.
Primary Genre: Karaoke
Secondary Genre: Instrumental
Backing Vocals must be recorded by the content provider as no amount of audio can be sampled from the original work(s)
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