What metadata distributors actually reject
The rejection email came from your distributor, but the rules did not. Nearly every metadata rejection enforces a store’s own published style rules — Apple’s Music Style Guide, Spotify’s Metadata Style Guide — checked before your release is delivered. Those documents are public, and this page walks them field by field.
- Most metadata rejections enforce the stores’ published style rules, checked by the distributor before delivery.
- Apple bans a specific list of words from standard titles, including Exclusive, Limited Edition, Album Version, Original Mix, and Digital Only.
- Apple and Spotify demand opposite formats for featured artists and version text; the distributor translates between them.
- An artist name must match exactly across every release; a misleading name risks removal and a strike, not just rejection.
- The remedy is editing the field at your distributor and redelivering — once, for every store.
Who is actually rejecting your release?
Usually not the distributor: most metadata rejections enforce style rules that Apple and Spotify publish, applied by the distributor’s checks before delivery.
That changes what a rejection is. You are not appealing to someone’s mood. You are failing a written test with a public answer key, and almost nobody reads the key.
Apple’s is the Music Style Guide. Spotify’s is the Metadata Style Guide. Both are maintained, versioned, and specific down to the comma. Every field you submit gets measured against them and stretched or trimmed until it fits. Procrustes found steady work in music distribution.
What words get a title rejected?
Apple bans a specific list of terms from a standard title, and delivering one of them is an ordinary rejection reason. From the guide:
Titles must not include Exclusive, Limited Edition, Album Version, Original Mix, Tone, Alert Tone, Text Tone, Ringtone, Ringtone Version, E-Release, Digital Only, or Digital Download.
Format talk is banned too. Atmos, lossless, high-resolution, 24-bit — the store applies those as badges itself, and a title that claims them is returned. Same for Clean Version and Explicit Version: that is what the explicit flag is for.
So yes: a finished record can bounce over the word Exclusive. Months of work, held at the door by a fucking adjective.
The rule underneath the list is simpler than the list. Extra information appears in a title only when it is needed to identify the content. If the album is just the album, the title is just the title.
Why do featured artists cause rejections?
Because Apple and Spotify demand opposite formats: Apple requires featured artists in the title as (feat. Artist), and Spotify forbids featured names in titles entirely.
Apple’s format is exact — lowercase feat., in parentheses, as Track Title (feat. Artist). The variants featuring, Featuring, Feat and w/ are all invalid, and a featured artist must never be marked as a primary artist.
Spotify’s rule is the mirror image: featured and collaborating artist names must not appear in title or version fields at all. They belong in artist fields, with roles.
One upload, two contradictory rulebooks. This is the actual reason rejections feel random — your distributor is translating between stores that disagree, and the translation only works if the data is clean at the source. Put the featured artist in the artist field with the right role, and let the machinery place the punctuation.
How does version information have to be formatted?
On Apple, version information follows the title in parentheses — (Live), (Radio Edit), (2011 Remaster). Spotify takes the same text in its own version field, without parentheses.
Apple’s guide also keeps a vocabulary of accepted version terms — Live, Instrumental, Radio Edit, Extended Mix, Sped Up, Slowed Down among them. Stay inside it. Inventing your own version language is how a clean master comes back with a form letter.
And the one that catches everyone: Original Mix is not a version. Album Version is not a version. If the recording is the standard one, the version field stays empty — empty is the correct value.
Why was the artist name flagged?
Because the name does not exactly match the name on the rest of the catalogue: Spotify requires one spelling of an artist name, applied consistently to all content.
Nothing rides along in the field. No dates, no instruments, no (Guitarist), no band affiliations — and no SEO bait: Sleep Music and Christmas Hits are not artist names, and Spotify’s guide says so by name.
The escalation is real. A name that appears intended to mislead — a near-match on a bigger act — is not treated as a formatting problem: Spotify may remove the product and issue a strike under its content guidelines.
A song landing on the wrong artist profile is its own disaster with its own fix, and it gets its own piece. The short version holds for everything here: the name field is an identifier, not a billboard.
What gets artwork rejected?
Apple rejects cover art carrying website addresses, logos, QR codes, competitor references, pricing, or audio-format claims — and art that is pixelated, rotated, misaligned, or misleading.
The pattern is the same as titles: the store controls the presentation, so your assets are not allowed to advertise inside it. Save the handle for the bio. Cover art has enough failure modes — sizing, text, reuse — to deserve its own piece; the rule above catches most of it today.
Which fields fail, field by field?
The fields below are where metadata rejections actually happen, with what breaks each one.
| Field | What gets it rejected |
|---|---|
| Title | A banned word (Exclusive, Original Mix), format claims, promotional text — or a featured name, on Spotify’s side |
| Version | Parentheses inside the version field, invented version terms, Album Version written for the standard cut |
| Primary artist | Spelling that varies between releases; anything in the field beyond the name |
| Featured artist | Marked as primary; the wrong feat. format on Apple; named in the title on Spotify |
| Genre | Generic genre terms doing duty as names or title keywords — White Noise, Lo-Fi, Sped Up |
| Language | Title casing that ignores the language’s own rules |
| Explicit flag | Clean Version or Explicit Version typed into the title instead of setting the flag; the store badges it |
| P-line / C-line | Missing or nonsense years and owners — the ownership claim you have already published |
| ISRC | A code reused between recordings, or issued from a prefix that is not yours — its own repair job once live |
| UPC | A code that belongs to a different product |
What happens after a rejection?
A metadata rejection is correctable: fix the field at your distributor, redeliver, and the release goes back through review.
The escalation path is reserved for deception. Formatting mistakes come back to you; misleading names and metadata can be removed and struck. The distance between an error and a violation is intent, and the stores read intent straight from your fields.
So a rejection is annoying, and it is also the system working. The same checks that bounced your parenthesis are what keep an impersonator’s single off your artist page.
How do you stop it happening again?
- Pick one spelling of every name and never type another. The field is an identifier. Treat it like one.
- Leave the version field empty for the standard cut. Original Mix is not a version.
- Keep featured artists in artist fields, with roles. Let the distributor place the punctuation per store.
- Set the explicit flag honestly and let the badge do the talking. Never write it into a title.
- Write the P-line and C-line before upload day. They are ownership claims, not decoration.
- Read the two guides once. Twenty minutes, and the next rejection email becomes optional.
FAQ
Does a rejection penalise my account?
A formatting rejection is returned for correction, and neither store’s style rules attach a stated penalty to it. Metadata intended to mislead is different: Spotify may remove the product and issue a strike.
Why did one store accept what another rejected?
Each store enforces its own style guide, and the guides disagree — Apple requires featured artists in the title as (feat. Artist) while Spotify forbids featured names in titles. A distributor checks against the rules of every store it delivers to.
Can I put a producer credit or social handle in a title?
No. Extra and promotional text in titles is prohibited — Apple bans it from standard titles and from artwork, and Spotify prohibits promotional or decorative text in titles and artist names.
Do I have to fix a rejection separately for every store?
No. Metadata is corrected once, at the distributor, and redelivered to every store from the same corrected fields.
Sources
- Apple, Apple Music Style Guide — the banned title terms, feat. formatting, version vocabulary, and artwork rules.
- Spotify, Metadata Style Guide — artist-name consistency, featured-artist and version placement, and misleading-name enforcement.
Store rules change and are quoted here as of the date above; the linked guides are the living documents. Distributor checks vary — confirm specifics with yours before you resubmit anything.
Keeping the register
CatalogTracker keeps the fields the stores check — titles, versions, identifiers, the explicit flag, the P-line — on the release they belong to, with a completeness meter that shows what is missing before a store finds it. In development for iPhone.