Updated July 13th, 2019
Your music has been accepted by a music library… Great, congratulations! You’ve arrived!
Well, almost…
It’s actually only the beginning ?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s not rare for a music library to have thousands of tunes on offer.
Step 1 was getting in there. You’ve done that. Good job!
Step 2 is making sure your music appears in the search results of the music library so potential customers can find you…
!!! WARNING !!!
This post is about step 2. It’s most DEFINITELY not the most fun you’ll have with your music BUT if you’re aiming to make a living through music licensing, you need to bite the bullet and take this seriously…
So….
How Do You Get Your Music To The Top Of The Search Results?
When a potential client is browsing a music library, you want to make sure your music appears at the top of the search results page.
For that to happen, you basically need to keyword the crap out of your tune!!
The logic is simple.
The more pertinent keywords you will have attached to your tune, the more it will appear at the top of the search results.
Think about QUANTITY. Come up with at least 20 keywords per track and….
QUALITY. These keywords can’t be vague. They need to refer to something specific.
For example, “love” is fine but “breakup” is better. One is generic, the other is specific.
The Ultimate Music Keywords and Tags Checklist
To make sure I cover all my basics and more, I use a checklist when tagging my tunes.
Here’s how it works.
I listen to one of my tunes on repeat and go through the checklist below.
1- write down all the moods that the music evokes. Having a list of moods printed out helps.
2- write down a couple of artists that come to mind when listening to the tune
3- take 5-10 minutes to explore “related artists” on Spotify, Google Play or other to determine if there are other artists you can flag as “Sounds like…”
4- write down the genre of TV show or movie the tune would be a good fit for. Having a list of film genres printed out helps.
5- take 5-10 minutes to identify a few artists/composers who have placed music in these type of TV shows/films and add them to your list of “Sounds like”
6- play crystal ball and try to imagine what a music supervisor might type in the search engine
7- take 5-10 minutes to review all the keywords you’ve come up with and see if you can come up with other words that more or less evoke the same thing but are more precise (e.g. “sad” develops into “breakup”, “tears”, “divorce”)
Pro tip: if you can identify keywords that others won’t think of but a music supervisor or content creator is likely to search from time to time, you’ll be golden!
Finding Music Tags and Keywords Walkthrough
Ok, let’s do this!
I’m taking my tune, “Sunny Cloud”….
And going through the entire process right before your little eyes ?
Step 1: What moods does the music evoke? (15 min)
You don’t have to start from scratch. You can print out this list of keywords for mood and styles.
Step 2: Does the music sound like any other artist? (6 min)
Step 3: Where can you “see” this music? (8 min)
On which TV show(s) and/or movie(s) would the music work well?
Step 4: Are there film/TV music composers that write similar music? (8 min)
Step 5: Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. (4 min)
Which words would you have to type into the search bar to be super happy with this tune coming up first in the results?
Step 6: Go through all of your keywords and try to find new, more specific, ones. (10 min)
Quick recap
– keywords need to be relevant (no spam) BUT
– they don’t have to be perfect (don’t overthink it, go with your gut).
In fact, they CANNOT be perfect because….
– keywords are subject to personal sensitivities (you could ask for input from friends, family and other musicians to find more relevant keywords)
This takes aaages! Is it really worth it?
So this exercise DOES take a while. It took me close to one hour to come up with all the keywords for “Sunny Clouds”!
I’m telling you though…. it’s an absolute game-changer!
Why?
Simply because not many musicians actually bother to do this properly.
If you take the time to find 20+ quality keywords to describe each of your tunes, I guarantee your ranking in music libraries’ results page will improve.
More Input = More Ideas = Better Ranking
Great article Joyce! I’ll add that this also really pays off when I keep track of all this info & not “reinvent the wheel” every time I make a submission! (also thanks to you!)
good ideas thanks
You’re welcome 🙂 If you need help with this, don’t hesitate to post a streaming link to one of your tracks.
I just came upon this great article, I tried to download the “Music Keywords and Tagging Cheat Sheet (ref CP011)” but the link seems to not work. How could I get a copy? Thank you
Thanks for letting me know! Just fixed the link.
You can find all Cheat Sheets and checklists over here.
This is soo good, it helps me to build better keywords.
Hey, I notice this article had on the top of the google search engine, Awesome! Is this also the result of the intention of choosing the accurate SEO tools and keywords for the article? Haha 🙂
Really?! Do you remember what keywords you searched for?
I’ve got to confess that although I do try to optimise for SEO, most of my good results happen by chance!!
Hello again Joyce! 🙂
Oops,
sorry Joyce I meant, not this post (haha, I should check the title before i mention it on the wrong post,),
but this post: https://www.creativeandproductive.com/tags-keywords-metadata/
Both are so similar title XD
Keyword in Google: how to keyword metadata music
Oops I think I killed the hype Joyce (No, not for April Fool, I even dont realize yesterday was April Fool XD)
And also some of your posts are on FIRST page from my browser on PC, but not on the top on first page, like:
Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing.
Keyword:
pro con music publish
6 Top Music Libraries for Producers
keyword:
top music libraries
How to be Insanely Productive in Studio
keyword:
productive in studio
If the position changes or even they are gone, well yeah, maybe Google update them again for their SEO ladder.
If these four posts were strong in your Google SEO, maybe others would follow, Yay!
Title contributes your SEO ranking cause it also highlight the keywords to the website post title. Also how responsive your website are, does it perform well on PC, tablet, android, iOS 🙂
I can conclude that your website SEO is STRONG for this FEW of words and sentences. I still remember that I had “lost” into your website after I searched bunchs and BUNCHS of website about productivity in studio. and read your VERY first post called “How to be Insanely Productive in Studio”, and I thought and I still dont know you before I found your article on kopyrighting with some guy on comment section, called Neville. Yes your post on that website CHANGES everything about my point of view for the music industry. (I used to be thought that the only way to get revenue or living income are to sell BUNCH of songs on CD and streaming, also some gigs like performance on live concert or even working for somebody like sound designing etc.) Yet still this hidden gold mine just only SHARES 2-3% of all income revenue from overall music industry (Heck, more than 50 percents of share come from Streaming :0).
That’s it I think for this time Joyce, Merci beaucoup. 🙂
Awesome! That’s great to hear 🙂
Thank you so much Joyce! 🙂
You’re very welcome, Jackson 😉
Hey, thanks for the lists and tips! Great help.
You’re welcome!