Thanks for moving your existing catalogue of music over to us here at co:brand - we're looking forward to getting this all in our system and helping your music management by having all of your releases under one roof. We understand that this can sometimes seem like a daunting process, particularly with the amount of metadata we require, so we've created this guide to make you aware of the process, what we will need from you, and how long this might take.
Note that in most cases, our team at co:brand will be able to assist with catalogue transfers, but these can also be carried out by your own organisational team through using the 'Import' feature in your release dashboard - the rest of the process is the same as what we will outline here.
FAQs - Moving your catalogue to co:brand?
Here are some things to consider…
Spotify for Artists, and other artist release management platforms or apps: it is likely that artists or management teams will receive a notification once a transfer has been initiated suggesting that this release will be 'released soon' or is 'upcoming'. Whilst this may appear incorrect, some DSPs register catalogue transfers as new releases. You should not be alarmed here, it is standard procedure for transfers, and no action needs to be taken in response to this.
Social Media sound clips: TikTok and Meta social sounds will need to be delivered (in the same vein as full products) with the same UPC and ISRC pairing as the historic deliveries. Once a new delivery with active rights is received, the system will automatically link the new delivery with the previous record under the same UPC-ISRC pair and a clip and its accumulated usage will be reinstated. This means that all transfer products with associated social sound clips will require metadata showing specific timestamps, UPCs, and ISRCs in order to upload. Otherwise, when previous label/distributors issue takedowns, it is likely that all social sounds associated with releases being transferred will also be removed from social platforms (and any creates associated).
Timeframe: most catalogue transfers take time to complete. If you are moving catalogue in response to a contract ending with a previous label or distributor, please allow at least 4 weeks+ for the transfer to be complete before notifying other parties of taking down releases. For manual transfers, please also factor in the time needed to gather all required metadata and audio files before we can initiate the transfer, and set up time for each release. For DDEX transfers, timelines will depend on the size of your catalogue and how quickly your S3 delivery can be prepared and validated on our end — we recommend building in additional time for any metadata remediation if contributor fields (artist, performer, songwriter, producer) need to be populated or corrected before ingestion.
Existing streams: once transfers have been initiated, it can take 3-5 working days for stream counts to sync between the existing release and the transfer - we ask that you allow this process to complete before initiating any takedowns so that you maintain the correct stream counts.
Transferring Catalogue with DDEX
What is DDEX?
DDEX (Digital Data Exchange) is an industry standard for delivering music metadata and audio files in bulk. It allows distributors and rights holders to transfer large catalogues in a structured, validated format - making it the most reliable method for large-scale catalogue imports.
co:brand supports DDEX-based catalogue transfers via Amazon S3.
How it works
We'll set up a dedicated S3 bucket for your transfer and send you a secure link containing your access credentials and bucket name. We'll also share the bucket's server region.
To complete the setup on your end, we'll need your DPID (Delivery Party Identifier) - this is the unique identifier assigned to you as the sender of DDEX files. We use this to validate that the DSID (Delivery Service Identifier) of the incoming files matches the bucket assigned to you before we ingest anything.
Summary of what we'll share with you:
Secure link with S3 bucket credentials
Bucket name
Server region
What we need from you:
Your DPID
DDEX compatibility
Metadata requirements
Our aggregator requires the following contributor fields to be populated on every release in order to deliver successfully. Please ensure these are included in your DDEX export, or let us know what you'd like entered in each field if you don't currently hold this data:
Artist - the artist name(s)
Performer - any featured or additional performers
Songwriter - the credited songwriter(s) for each track
Producer - the credited producer(s) for each track
If any of these fields are missing from your existing catalogue data, please flag this when you get in touch and we can discuss how to handle them ahead of ingestion.
Ready to get started?
Reach out to the co:brand team and we'll get your S3 bucket set up and send over your credentials.
Manual Catalogue Transfers
Release Dates & Metadata
We'll need the following from you to get things moving:
All masters (ideally linked correctly to each track metadata row in your export)
All artwork (ideally linked correctly to each track metadata row in your export)
A full metadata export including a DSP breakdown of where each UPC has been delivered to
If you have any questions, or if you'd like a template for the metadata export, please refer to the bottom of this page.
Transfers will only be successful if metadata is IDENTICAL between the 'new' transferred release and the existing (already live) release. This includes:
Release date: this may sound odd, but we want to enter the correct and same release date for the transfer as it initially had (i.e. if the release was 3rd Jan 2018, we would want to keep this the same). This allows for DSPs to backdate, the release to go live ASAP, and also be registered as the 'same' release.
Credits: Artist, performer, producer, songwriter, label, and copyright credits
Product Codes: UPCs + ISRCs must be listed
Artwork: (for every product being transferred)
N.B. co:brand's catalogue import system can typically pull artwork from live releases, however, we ask for this as occasional circumstances call for manual uploads. Artwork should be shared through a link to Dropbox/Google Drive/similar, as an aspect ratio of 1:1 (perfect square cover art), minimum 1500 x 1500 pixels & maximum 6000 x 6000 pixels, and in TIFF, JPG or PNG format.
Masters (for every product being transferred)
N.B. Where possible, we ask for these as individual links per track (see metadata template sheet listed below) to avoid confusion when uploading masters. This is particularly relevant for products where an extended version also exists, or sped-up/slowed versions. All masters should be shared through a link to Dropbox/Google Drive/similar, and in .wav or FLAC format. MP3s are not permitted.
DSPs that the release is being uploaded to - for each product (UPC) we require the exact list of DSPs that this UPC was delivered to. This is particularly important for Beatport-specific products, Spotify-only products, or cases where 1 product has been delivered to all DSPs at once.
Beatport Transfers
If any of the products being transferred include Beatport, please note that alongside transferring the label page itself, we'll also need to set these products up fresh in our system (the same process as a standard streaming product setup, just applied to your Beatport releases). This is what allows you to make future changes and view analytics for these releases in-app going forward.
As with standard streaming products, all metadata, artwork, and masters for these Beatport products - including UPCs and ISRCs - must be identical to what was originally released.
To be clear, this will not create duplicate products visible on Beatport. We've had this confirmed directly by Beatport - the products will seamlessly merge with the existing live releases.
Before we can do this, we'll need confirmation that ownership of the Beatport label page has been transferred to us - this has to happen first, as we're unable to set up the products until the label page is under our ownership.