Metadata Best Practices: Apple Music Style Guide

Following the Apple Music Style Guide is mandatory to maintain your distribution rights with Apple Music and iTunes. It sets the standards for how metadata — titles, artists, version titles, album details, and artwork — must be organised and presented so your release displays correctly on release date. Accurate metadata is essential for a good listener experience and is a baseline requirement for Apple and other DSPs.

We strongly recommend sharing the guide with your team and checking compliance whenever you prepare or review a release for distribution.

Key areas the guide covers

The points below highlight the areas that most often cause issues. They are a summary only — they are not exhaustive, so please read the full guide.

• Titles & capitalization: use Apple's title-casing and punctuation rules. Avoid all-caps and promotional text such as "Exclusive," "Official," or "Out Now."
  
  
• Artists & contributor roles: credit each contributor in the correct role (primary, featured, remixer, and so on). Don't credit labels or distributors as artists, and follow the rules for compound artists and Various Artists compilations.
  
  
• Version titles: format remix, live, and edit information consistently, e.g. "Track Name (Live)" or "Track Name (Radio Edit)."
  
  
• Explicit / Clean: flag explicit content accurately. Mark a track Explicit if it contains explicit language or themes, and Clean only if it is a genuinely censored version.
  
  
• Artwork: meet Apple's size and content requirements. Artwork must be square and high-resolution, and must not contain URLs, logos, QR codes, or format/promo text (Apple adds labels like "Explicit" automatically).
  
  
• Genre: choose the most accurate genre so your release is classified and recommended correctly.
  
  
• Classical music: Apple applies especially strict metadata rules for classical (composer, conductor, ensemble, work/movement titles, and keys). Only use the Classical genre if you can provide fully accurate metadata.

Example from the guide: how to avoid creating a compound artist.

Metadata issues and Apple tickets

If Apple identifies a metadata issue in a release, it can affect the release's visibility in some or all territories on the release date. For missing or significantly incorrect metadata, Apple may remove the release from all Apple Music and iTunes stores.

When Apple detects an issue, it generates an Apple ticket, which prompts us to notify you by email through Revelator Support. The email describes the problem, requests a fix within 48 hours, and gives step-by-step instructions for correcting and redelivering the release. Once you've made the fix, we follow up with Apple to close the ticket.

Example: an Apple ticket from Revelator Support.

Open the Apple Music Style Guide 2.4

Related articles

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