The Problem With Metadata
Kevn Kinney, P.P. Arnold, and the label industry's failure to tag our streaming music
All the major music streaming services share a basic flaw. Every one of them attempts to manage a gigantic catalog from severely compromised databases that sometimes can’t tell the difference between a ‘70s Memphis band called Big Star and a 21st-century hip hop artist who’s using the same name.
Most albums are embedded with an artist name, a title, song titles and a date that may or may not correspond to the music’s original release. Occasionally, songs are tagged with their songwriters but that’s a hit-or-miss proposition at best. That’s a sliver of the important information that should be embedded in a tracks’s metadata, and we’re all suffering because of the industry’s sloppy approach to digital music.
We live in a world where online retailers make buying recommendations based on transactions and browsing histories that now go back decades. Some companies know everything about what kind of shoes we like, but music streamers consistently fail to understand our taste in music.
Apologies to everyone who’s heard this one before, since I’ve been obsessed with this topic for most of the century now. I once pitched a major digital music retailer on why they should take the lead on improving metadata, but they took the not unreasonable position that the copyright holders were in control of that decision and that I should approach them.
No labels wanted to take the lead on this, because the download sales model was working and going back to upgrade the metadata was a potentially expensive proposition, plus the effort wouldn’t really pay off unless all the labels bought into the concept and the overwhelming majority of catalog music featured the upgraded information.
We’re stuck using a system that was devised in the mid-90s by a tech enthusiast who got no input from the musicians, producers, and engineers who could have helped design the right way to tag our music. I’m sure that original MP3 tagger never dreamed that this makeshift system would become the industry standard, so let’s not put the blame where it doesn’t belong. The Label Industry chose to avoid the subject, and we’ve been stuck with a flawed system for more than three decades.
Let’s Go Dancing
I’m back on this topic because of something that’s happened with the first songs to be released from the upcoming album project Let’s Go Dancing: a Celebration of the Oeuvre of Kevn Kinney. The path to this epic release began when Kevn’s wife Anna asked friends to record some of his songs for a birthday surprise during the pandemic. The eventual result is a parade of stars after stars after stars recording almost Kevn’s entire catalog.
There will be four LPs released over four seasons starting this fall, with expanded versions available on digital and probably 100 songs total. I’ve been helping Anna a little bit, and I’ve heard some recordings that blow me away. There are some great artists involved, but I’ve been sworn not to share any spoilers. The final roster will certainly generate a lot of attention for Kevn’s catalog of great songs.
Kevn grew up in Milwaukee, and Anna kicked off the project with releases from some of his hometown friends, Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie from Violent Femmes and Sam Llanas from the Bodeans. Gordon and Brian play on different songs, but Anna wanted to allow Violent Femmes fans to have the tracks show up in their favorite streaming service’s algorithm and display on the band’s landing page.
That result required some tortured tagging, so what we get is this:
Brian Ritchie and Sam Llanas featuring Violent Femmes -“Catch the Wind” (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify)
Gordon Gano with Boy Dirt Car featuring Violent Femmes - “Gotta Move On” (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify)
Both recordings are wonderful, but neither of them actually “features” Violent Femmes. Unfortunately, there’s no way for the broken metadata system we use now to register Gordon Gano or Brian Ritchie solo tracks as having a connection to Violent Femmes. After a lot of discussion, this was the very imperfect solution everyone decided to use.
No provisions were made for Bodeans fans. Also, Ouevre? Is Kevn going to grow a pencil mustache and wear a beret?
Sleepwalker
An even more frustrating hack was devised for Sleepwalker (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify), the new solo album by Louise Post from Veruca Salt.
Here’s how the album shows up in Apple Music and what the Veruca Salt landing page looks like:
There’s no news about Louise’s release on the Veruca Salt page. Now check out the same LP on Qobuz:
The artist is listed as Louise Post - Veruca Salt and then the LP shows up on the band’s landing page. If Nina Gordon, Louise’s partner in Veruca Salt, is cool with the listing, then it’s a workable hack even though a solo LP is something that should be able to stand on its own in the world without any of the blurred line confusion that not-exactly-accurate labeling might cause.
The same Louise Post/Veruca Salt tagging was employed for Spotify and Tidal, so Apple Music is the only place where Post’s album doesn’t appear on the band’s landing page.
You can’t blame the artists here. Anyone with a basic understanding of FileMaker Pro could fix the industry’s metadata problem in a weekend an hour.
Here’s some of the information that’s not included with the music that you’re streaming:
Musicians
Vocalists
Producer
Recording Engineer
Studio
Mix Engineer
Mastering Engineer
Recording dates
Original label and release date
Reissue labels and release dates
That’s a bare bones list. I can also imagine artists who’d want to include the instruments they played or details about microphones and recording gear. Information doesn’t take up any meaningful space in an audio file, so the possibilities are nearly infinite.
Apple once made a big deal about including digital liner notes with albums they sold in the iTunes Store, but that information might as well have been a read-only PDF file attached to the music. It helped people who wanted to read but was never going to tap into the power that embedded data could bring to music.
If songs were tagged with all the relevant information, we’d end up with super-powered recommendation algorithms. Let’s say you’re having a moment with George Jones “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and decide that you want to hear every record made by Jones’ producer Billy Sherrill where he recorded other songs written by Bobby Braddock and Curly Putman. A properly tagged music catalog could generate that playlist automatically.
Use your imagination. I’d like a playlist of every song that session musicians Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones worked on together before they formed Led Zeppelin. I’m sure I could make those playlists for myself and entertain myself for hours doing so, but I’ve also spent most of my life building up the knowledge base that gives me a clue of how to start.
If we want to make music compelling for kids who grew up as digital natives, a better database could play a huge role in convincing them to care.
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Cambridge Audio Made by Music Podcast EP07: P.P. Arnold
Los Angeles native P.P. Arnold escaped from the Ikettes on a U.K. tour and got herself a record deal with Andrew Loog Oldham’s Immediate Records label. Oldham revered Phil Spector’s productions, and his label’s records are often a weird hybrid of that L.A. Wall of Sound and British psychedelic folk. Arnold’s releases are among the best on Immediate.
U.K.-based Cambridge Audio has long been one of my favorites gear manufacturers. I’ve owned their CD players, wireless speakers, and earphones and there’s something about the way engineers at British audio companies (see also: Bowers & Wilkins, Wharfedale, KEF, Rega) tune their gear that resonates with me.
(Note: New research into the architecture of Stonehenge suggests that the site was constructed to amplify sound inside the circle and block noise from outside, proving that the history of innovative British audio engineering goes back more than 5,000 years.)
Cambridge Audio has launched a podcast that features interviews with legendary U.K. artists, and P.P. Arnold is the latest in a series that has so far featured bassist Guy Pratt, Boy George, Fatboy Slim, Mo’ Wax founder James Lavelle, producer Stephen Street, and Hot Chip singer Alexis Taylor. They’re touting future episodes with Primal Scream, the KLF, the Small Faces’ Steve Marriott and Peter Gabriel.
P.P. joined the Ikettes to escape an abusive marriage and, once they arrived in London, she started dating Mick Jagger and Ian Stewart, the Rolling Stones road manger and keyboardist. Ian, who somehow forgave Oldham for telling him he was too ugly to be a full-time member of the band, introduced Arnold to Oldham, who signed her to his fledgling record label.
Arnold’s version of the Cat Stevens song “The First Cut Is the Deepest” (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify) was released in May 1967 (six months before Stevens recorded it) and reached #18 on the U.K. charts. The record was produced by former Springfields member Mike Hurst, who also made the early Cat Stevens records, and the arrangement was by Arthur Greenslade, who notably arranged Del Shannon’s amazing 1967 remake of “Runaway” (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify), Chris Farlowe’s Mick Jagger-produced cover of “Paint It Black” (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify), and an impressive array of easy listening albums.
During the podcast interview, Arnold credits Greenslade with arranging the Bee Gees early U.K. recordings, but I can’t find any evidence of that online and can’t put my hands on my copies of those first LPs right now. Whether it’s true or not, the arrangements on the early Bee Gees LPs are a great reference point for the incredibly baroque arrangement of Arnold’s “First Cut,” a record that’s heavy on strings, horns and harpsichord set against a Spector-style wall of drums.
Arnold has exceptional control of her vocal performances. She can deploy the explosive and dramatic wails that characterize Tina Turner records, but she uses them selectively, and they offer a huge payoff when they’re dropped into a performance that’s so deeply connected to the meaning of a song’s lyrics.
Arnold hasn’t had the opportunity to make enough records, and her streaming situation is a disaster because her metadata is a mess. It’s a given that I had to dig around online to figure out who produced and arranged the session for “First Cut,” but P.P. Arnold’s albums seem to have been uploaded with a variety of artist names, including P.P. Arnold (no spaces in first name), PP Arnold, and P. P. Arnold (spaces in first name). None of the major streaming services’ landing pages for Arnold have the same albums matched to the same version of her name.
Her first two LPS are 1967’s The First Lady of Immediate (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify) ) and 1968’s Kafunta (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify). Sanctuary Records compiled them on The First Cut: The Immediate Anthology in 2001, when I was going through my Andrew Loog Oldham/Immediate Records obsession. That CD is out of print, but it’s available on eBay and Discogs. There seem to be two versions with the same cover image. The one with “The Immediate Anthology” on the cover has 28 songs, and the one without it has only 23. Weirdly, that compilation is streaming on Tidal and nowhere else.
There’s also The Turning Tide, a 2017 release that compiles excellent tracks recorded for a never-released third album (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify), but that one is sometimes listed with a different spelling of the first name and therefore not on the same page with her other albums.
Everyone’s got her 2019 comeback album The New Adventures of P.P. Arnold (Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify) on the same landing page, probably because they could copy the spelling of her name from the LP title.
In 2007, Arnold recorded an LP with Dr. Robert from the Blow Monkeys called Five in the Afternoon. You can hear it on Apple Music, but only if you already know it exists, because the artist is “PP Arnold, Dr. Robert” in the title area and “Dr. Robert, PP Arnold” in each song’s metadata.Somehow Spotify has managed to link each artist separately, so it shows up on their individual pages. Tidal has managed to split the artists, but they’ve got her as “Pp Arnold” and the LP doesn’t show up on her main artist page. It’s not streaming on Qobuz.
Arnold also made a smooth jazz album with called This Is London with Pressure Point in 2015. Apple Music and Tidal credit the album to PP Arnold, Pressure Point, so you’ve got to know it’s there to find it. Somehow, this album shows up on Spotify’s P.P. Arnold landing page. It’s not streaming on Qobuz.
Neither Five in the Afternoon nor This Is London are up to the quality of her best records, but P.P. Arnold is such a criminally underrecorded artist that anything available is worth a listen.
What streamers don’t know now is which musicians played on P.P. Arnold’s classic recordings, who wrote the songs, the dates she was in the studio, and that the sessions took place at Olympic in London, perhaps the most happening studio in the world at the time outside of Los Angeles. There’s nothing in the database connecting these recordings to other 1967-1968 London records that share creative DNA with Arnold’s music.
I don’t know as much about those connections as I’d like to, and I’ve spent way too much of my life trying to figure out who played on what records. Data mining is the greatest creator of wealth in the modern economy, and the music industry has left billions uncollected because no one has organized a way to tap into the infinite web that connects every important record ever made.
Arnold released Soul Survivor: The Autobiography last December and I only just learned about it from the podcast interview. The cover features an amazing image from the Kafunta LP cover shoot and Arnold reads the audiobook herself.
If you’re enjoying this post and have a minty U.S. vinyl pressing of Kafunta with the gatefold cover, please let me know ASAP.
Here’s P.P. Arnold on the German TV show Beat Club.
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Alexander Stille - The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune
The Sullivan Institute started in the ‘50s as a loose confederation of therapists promoting a radical approach to therapy, one that insisted that patients cut off contact with their toxic families, because all families are toxic.
Focusing one’s emotional life with a single person was also toxic, so patients were also encouraged required to sleep around as much as possible. Early patients included the painter Jackson Pollack, the singer Judy Collins, and the painter Jules Olitski.
By the end of the 1960s, the group had morphed into a commune based the Upper West Side of Manhattan, one that was tightly controlled by institute founder Saul Newton. Newton and his fellow leaders slept with their patients, separated babies from their biological parents (because parents are toxic), and started the Third Wall, an underground theater group that aimed to change the world in the 1970s.
Alexander Stille has just published a deeply researched book based on interviews with adults who were members of the cult and the children who were raised in this incredibly dark .
Here’s what stuck with me: No one seems to have gotten rich off the cult, but the leadership spent a considerable amount of cash sending their offspring to the most expensive private schools in Manhattan. Some of those kids must have gone to school with people I know, yet I’d never heard of Sullivanian therapy until I started reading articles about this book.
This is a well-documented tale of hardcore leftists morphing into a mini totalitarian state, but ridiculousness of the story doesn’t play as funny because Stille does such a good job of documenting the damage that the group did to its patients and their children.
I can’t really get my head around the idea that the commune existed for over two decades on the Upper West Side. The ‘70s were weird.
8-Track of the Day
We’re starting to gain some momentum at Soapbox with our mission to capture performances and stories from notable musicians. I shared some details about the project in my first post called “Sounds of Today.”
Soapbox had an excellent session last week with Ed Roland from Collective Soul, who debuted a new song called “A Letter From E” alongside some classics like “Shine,” “The World I Know,” and “December.” Ed shared a few great stories about how he writes his songs and why he considers the self-titled 1995 Collective Soul LP the band’s real debut album.
“A Letter From E” sounds like a hit to me, the kind of song that would get Ed a Best Original Song Oscar nomination if it debuted in a Hollywood movie. All you music supervisors should call Red Light Management and get on that ASAP.
We also met with Tommy Shaw and Chuck Panozzo from Styx and showed them the Buddy Guy performance demo. Those guys definitely have some stories to share and I’m optimistic that I can convince Tommy to play his solo hit “Girls With Guns” when we get them to the studio for a recording session.