Words can be a powerful asset when you’re part of the music industry, and we’re not only talking about the song lyrics. The right wording for your description is extremely important when it comes to describing and tagging the songs you submit to music libraries. It greatly affects your online presence as an artist, not to mention your sales!
How are tags and descriptions critical in your work as a music maker?
While it’s totally true that we’re capable of experiencing the most subtle and inexplicable emotions captured in a piece of music, sadly, the same doesn’t apply to search engines or song filtering systems in music catalogs. Although we already have advanced algorithms that tag music automatically with the help of machine learning, you’ll often see that the tags suggested by these algorithms are rather basic and bland. For example, which of these do you find more intriguing: ‘ambient’ or ‘ethereal’? Since algorithms do not have the ability to immerse themselves into the music, it becomes a musician’s responsibility to characterize their music in a way that speaks both to search systems and potential clients.
Filmmakers, producers, online marketers come up with new ideas for their videos every day, and most of the time, they know precisely what kind of music they’re looking for. By adding relevant tags and persuading descriptions to your tracks, you can make sure your artist profile isn’t left unnoticed.
So to sum up, you want your track tags and descriptions to be on point because:
a) you want to be discovered by the search engines that clients are using
b) you want to save your potential client’s time
c) you want to show how your music can supplement your client’s projects.
Now that we’ve established that accurate and compelling descriptions go hand in hand with your amazing music and can add value to your artist profile, let’s see how you can actually improve your description writing skills!
How to tag and describe your songs
Don’t worry if you are not as talented with words as you are with a piano keyboard. No one expects you to write a poem – just relax, turn on your imagination and the right words will come! In a way, describing music is similar to making music lists or playlists (by genre, theme, or feeling), and we’ve all done that before!
Here are a few techniques that can help you along the way:
1. If nothing comes to your mind, start with the basics such as describing the instrumental and writing down the instruments that you used in the track. Clients like to know what instruments are being used because they often have a specific image of the soundtrack for their projects. Also, don’t forget to use these instruments as tags!
2. Once you’ve done that, start thinking on a larger scale: what is the genre of the track? In what types of videos or projects would you see this track working best? Write it down because this is useful stuff! Genres are also important for tags.
3. Now that you’re approaching the creative part, listen to your track again and take note of what kind of mood it evokes. Do not worry about the wording yet, just note the most basic emotions: sadness, joy, horror, etc…
4. By the time you’re done with these three steps, you should already have a rather adequate track description. But it doesn’t have to end here! If you want your description to be more nuanced and sophisticated, try to elaborate a bit more on the moods you’ve put down before. If the track is sad, contemplate on it for a moment, in what way it is sad? Is it just sentimental, nostalgic or is it heartbreaking or agonizing? The more vivid the emotions, the more intriguing the description will appear to your clients.
5. The last thing you can do to make your descriptions stand out is to specify other aspects of the song such as its movement, style, dynamics, structure, or other quirks that make your piece superior to other artists’ tracks. Your goal is to prove your value to the client and pointing out some interesting twists you’ve done is the best way to do it.
Last but not least, never delete or waste your notes or drafts! If you have spare time, categorize all the tags and words you’ve used to describe different types of music and compile them into a little personal music dictionary. It will always come in handy when you need to find a quick tag or when you’re simply not feeling inspired.
We hope these few tips have helped you grasp the idea of how to create engaging song descriptions and tags to make your artist profile stand out. Naturally, it takes some energy to master this craft but if you practice writing about your music on a regular basis, you’ll soon notice that it gets easier with time and is definitely worth the effort.
