Why your name isn't in the credits, and how to get it added

59 · 2026-09-27 · 19 min read · Español

If your name is not in a store’s credits, one of three things happened: nobody entered it in the distributor’s form, somebody entered it wrong, or it was delivered flagged as not credited. The only way it gets added is the door every credit came through: the holder of the distributor account that delivered the release asks the distributor to redeliver with your name on the right role. No store adds a name on request from anyone. In the United States no law obliges anyone to credit you on a recording; in Canada an author and, since 2012, a performer hold a right to be named where reasonable in the circumstances, unless they waived it.

• Every store shows the credits the label or distributor delivered and nothing else. Spotify: “We can’t change this manually on our end because we show music according to the metadata sent to us.” Apple updates credits through the label’s tools.
• The person who can add a name is the holder of the distributor account that uploaded the release. DistroKid lets that account add credits at any time, even to a live release; CD Baby says roles cannot be added once a release has been distributed.
• The message to that person carries the track’s ISRC, your name spelled as it appears elsewhere, the role in the store’s own vocabulary, the level, and a request to resubmit the credits.
• A name that was delivered and still does not show may have been sent with DDEX’s IsCredited flag set to false, which tells every store to leave it off the credits page while keeping it for sales reporting.
• US federal copyright law gives an attribution right to the author of a work of visual art only. Canada’s Copyright Act gives an author, and a performer for performances after 2012, the right to be named where reasonable in the circumstances, unless waived.

Who left your name off?

Whoever filled in the distributor’s form: every store shows only what that form delivered, and no store or distributor adds a name itself.

The stores say it in one sentence each. Spotify: “We show all credits from the metadata your label or distributor sends us,” at the top of its page on credits. Apple, on the page it writes for labels, describes credits delivered with the release and changed “in iTunes Connect or via Transporter.” Neither store has a desk where a name is typed in on request. What a credit is and how one travels from the form to the panel are two other pages. This one starts where the second stopped: with a name that never went into the form.

Who was supposed to put it there has an answer on paper. The Recording Academy’s Producers & Engineers Wing, in its document on credits and recording metadata, names the problem — “too often, there is still a lack of complete and visible recording credits for creative contributors to the recording process” — and then the job: “The producer of a recording, in collaboration with the artist, assigns credits to performers and technical personnel, and is generally responsible for supplying accurate crediting information to the record label/media company or content owner.” The name was the producer’s to collect and the artist’s to deliver, and on a self-release those are one person with one login. Whose pen it is is another page; here it only matters that the pen was a person’s.

One more sentence from the delivery standard, because it rules out the machine as a suspect. DDEX, in its guidance on credited and uncredited contributions, says of the flag that marks a credit: “absence of a tag/flag is functionally equivalent to setting the tag/flag to true.” A name that arrives with nothing attached is a credited name. The standard credits you by default. The only thing that can leave you off is a person.

Who is allowed to add it?

Only the holder of the distributor account that delivered the release, by editing and resubmitting; the distributor redelivers and the store shows the update.

Spotify gives the route and the clock on one page: “To add or update song credits, contact your label or distributor and ask them to resend the track’s metadata with the correct credits. After we receive the update, credits usually appear within 7 days.” Its page on fixing metadata lists “Credits” as its own line and closes every line the same way: “We can’t change this manually on our end because we show music according to the metadata sent to us.” Apple makes the update “in iTunes Connect or via Transporter” and asks for “up to five business days” — tools and a wait, and the tools belong to whoever delivers. Tidal, on its artist help page, names the distributor or label as “your best point of contact.” Spotify cannot type your name and Apple will not. A ticket to a store about a name it was never sent is a pissing contest with a form.

The distributor takes the edit from the account, and the account is the uploader’s. DistroKid’s page on adding a producer: “You can add producer credits to your releases at any time by visiting your Credits page, even if your release is already live in services,” ending at a button marked “Done, submit to streaming services.” CD Baby’s page on adding credits says the opposite about its own form: “Roles can’t be added retroactively to releases that have already been distributed, so double-check credits before submitting.” Two distributors, two answers, and both addressed to your release and your Credits page. A contributor has neither. The distributor takes no request from a person it has no account for, and the store takes one from nobody. The ask goes to the person who uploaded.

If the name that is missing is yours on the artist line — the release is on the wrong profile, or the featured artist is absent from the title — that is a different record with a different fix. The credits panel is the list underneath the artist line, and it is the only list on this page.

What exactly do you ask for?

The track’s ISRC, your name as spelled elsewhere, the role in the store’s vocabulary, the level, and a request to resubmit the credits.

Write it so the account holder can paste it into the form without a follow-up question. Five lines, and why each is there:

• The ISRC of each track. A title repeats across a single, an album and a remaster; the code does not. It is in the metadata, not on the page.
• Your name, spelled once. The same string as on every other release you are on, down to the accent. A second spelling of you is a second person. For a writing credit, DistroKid asks for the real name, because songwriters “are typically credited by their real names, rather than stage or band names.”
• The role, as the store lists it. Apple says of a role it does not recognise, “we will attempt to match it to the most similar credit on Apple Music,” and a generic role such as Performer is not a performer role. The drummer asks for Drums, not Musician. Which production word and which writer word are each their own page; pick one and name it.
• The level. Every credit goes on each track it applies to, and one that holds across every track goes on the release too — the track is the truth and the release is the summary. Say which tracks.
• A date. Ask the account holder for the day the update was submitted. The stores’ clocks run from the day the store receives it, not the day you asked, and a date is the only way to tell late from lost.

Two things the message should not ask for. Not a company: Apple’s style guide, §2.16, says to “Credit the personnel that assisted with producing or engineering the release, rather than crediting a production company or studio,” so you ask for your name, not your studio’s. And not a sentence: the form takes a name on a role. The one place your own words can survive is DDEX’s display credit — a violinist delivered as Violin with a display credit of “Johnny on the fiddle” — and whether a distributor’s form has a box for it, or a store prints it, is not something either publishes for artists. Ask for the role. If you get the fiddle too, that is a gift.

Your name was delivered. Why is it still not showing?

Either a mechanical cause on the pipe, or the name was delivered with DDEX’s IsCredited flag false, which tells every store to omit the name.

The four mechanical causes are another page’s, each with its test there: the distributor does not deliver credits to that store, the store does not show that kind, the update has not landed inside the store’s clock, or the role did not survive the crossing. Run them first. If the account holder confirms the credit is in the form and all four pass, what is left is a fifth cause, which is not a failure of anything.

DDEX opens its guidance with the norm and the exception: “Most musicians want to be ‘officially’ credited for the work they do – and in most cases they also have a right to this. There are, however, exceptions.” The right it gestures at is in Canada’s statute and not in the United States’, two sections down; the exception is what the flag is for. “To differentiate between credited and uncredited contributions, the ERN message provides the boolean IsCredited flag,” which may carry a second, MayBeShared, and the page’s table says what a store does with each pair. Credited and shareable: the credits page, search, playlists, the discography. Not credited but shareable: off the credits page, still searchable, still linked from your artist page. Not credited and not shareable: “not officially credited and should not be shared in any context,” with the standard’s own example, “A session musician’s involvement in a recording that is not intended to be publicly acknowledged.” No credits page, no search result, no playlist, no discography. Then the table’s last line: “The data may always be used for sales/usage reporting.”

Read that row as the person it describes. Your name is in the delivery, on the right role, spelled correctly, and every store has been told to show it to nobody and count it for accounting. The file knows exactly who you are. It just put you in the iron mask.

So the question is not “was I delivered” but “was I delivered credited” — the role, and the flags on it. The artist’s form at a distributor usually has no such checkbox; the flag is set downstream, in the message the distributor writes, and the account holder is the one with standing to ask the distributor what it sent. The standard’s own example of an uncredited contribution is on the pillar and half a century old; yours is fixed by the same resend as any other credit, once somebody knows the flag is there.

Can somebody refuse to credit you, or refuse the word?

A player may ask to be left off, a label may forbid a credit by contract, and a store takes only roles on its list.

The first refusal is the contributor’s own, and it is lawful everywhere. DDEX’s not-credited-not-shareable row exists for it. Apple’s style guide, §2.18, tells the deliverer what to do: “If credits are not yet known or participants are anonymous, omit the credit entirely. Do not submit placeholder credits, such as TBD or Pending.” Canada puts both rights in one clause of its Copyright Act — to be named “by name or under a pseudonym and the right to remain anonymous.” A player who says “leave me off” is exercising a right, not causing a problem.

The second belongs to somebody else’s contract. A recording agreement can forbid a signed artist from appearing on anyone else’s release, or set conditions on it, and the standard’s not-shareable row does not say why a name would be withheld, only that it can be. No store or distributor page adjudicates it. Ask the person; if the answer is “my label won’t allow it,” that is the whole answer.

The third is a store’s, and it is about the word rather than the name. What a store files is a role on its list; what it may show is the display string; and what two people agreed across a table — co-producer against additional production, featured against side artist, mixer against engineer — is a contract between them, which a store neither reads nor honours. If the word you want is not on the list, the store files its nearest neighbour or nothing, and the only place your word is safe is the paper. A credit clause on one page, signed before anyone plays, is what that paper looks like.

Then the fourth case, which is not a refusal at all: the name was left off and nobody will say why. The standard has a checkbox for a player who asked to be left out and nothing for a player who was not asked. If it was an oversight, the message two sections up fixes it. If it was on purpose, no message does, and the rest of this page is about what does.

Does the law give you a right to be credited?

Not in the United States, where the federal attribution right covers visual art only; in Canada, for authors and performers, where reasonable in the circumstances.

The United States first, because the answer is shorter. The one attribution right in federal copyright law is section 106A, and it opens with its own limit: “the author of a work of visual art” “shall have the right … to claim authorship of that work.” A recording is not one. When artists reached for the trademark statute instead — the Lanham Act’s ban on a false designation of “origin” — the Supreme Court closed that door in 2003. In Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox, “origin of goods” “refers to the producer of the tangible goods that are offered for sale, and not to the author of any idea, concept, or communication embodied in those goods” — in that case, “the physical Campaigns videotape sold by Dastar.” The Court went looking for the author of a videotape and found the videotape. It added that section 106A’s right “attaches only to specified ‘work[s] of visual art.’” The U.S. Copyright Office, reviewing the field in a 2019 report, found that a framework which “includes a variety of federal and state laws” “continues to provide important protections, despite there being some room for improvement.” A credit clause in a signed agreement is a contract term, and what makes a signed page enforceable is the same in both countries; without one, in the United States, a missing name is not a wrong the copyright statute names.

Canada wrote the right down. Section 14.1(1) gives the author of a work “the right, where reasonable in the circumstances, to be associated with the work as its author by name or under a pseudonym and the right to remain anonymous.” Since the 2012 amendments, section 17.1(1) gives “a performer of a live aural performance or a performance fixed in a sound recording” the same for the performance — “if it is reasonable in the circumstances” — and section 17.2 limits it to a performance “that occurs after the coming into force of that subsection.” Both sections say the right “may not be assigned but may be waived in whole or in part,” and section 28.1 makes “Any act or omission that is contrary to any of the moral rights” an infringement “in the absence of the author’s or performer’s consent.” An omission. Leaving a name off is the act the section names. Whether it was reasonable in the circumstances to include you is the statute’s own qualifier, and this page does not answer it for your session. Whether you signed a waiver you can answer today: the waiver clause, and the rule that an assignment alone waives nothing, is on the assignment page.

So the map has two shapes. In Canada, a contributor who was left off and did not waive has a statute to point at, qualified by reasonableness, and a lawyer can say what it is worth in their case — starting from free. In the United States, a contributor has the contract they signed, if it names a credit — a producer agreement usually does, a work-for-hire clause may not — and the account holder’s goodwill. Nobody on either side of the border has a store to appeal to.

What to do when the answer is no

No store overrides the account holder; what remains is a contract naming the credit, Canada’s moral right, your registrations, and databases you edit yourself.

Three refusals look alike from the outside and are not. The distributor that does not deliver credits at all — Spotify’s “Some distributors don’t support credits yet” — leaves nothing for any store to show, and that case has its own paragraph. The distributor whose form will not add a role after distribution — CD Baby’s sentence above — publishes no route past that sentence, and this page will not invent one: the account holder asks CD Baby, in writing, and keeps the answer. And the person. When the uploader says no, the two companies behind them say what every page above says: the account holder decides what is delivered.

What to do with a no, in order. First, the money, because the credit was never carrying it. The registrations that pay a performer or a writer — SoundExchange, a performing rights organisation, The MLC, the Canadian societies — take your name from your own filings, not from a panel, and being uncredited on a release does not stop you registering the recording or the work with them; no credit pays anyone by itself, and no missing credit stops a registration. Second, the paper: read what you signed, or did not, for a credit clause, and in Canada for a waiver. Third, the record you can write yourself. MusicBrainz calls itself “a community-maintained, open source encyclopedia of music information,” where “anyone — including you — can contribute to the project by adding information about your favorite artists and their works.” Your credit can be in there tonight, under your own name, on your own role. Nothing on any store’s page says a store reads it, and this page will not say so either. A public database is a record; the stores take a delivery. But it is a true record, and a true record is what the Academy’s document asked the industry to keep.

Then the fix for the next one, which costs nothing. The credit is agreed before anyone plays, spelled the way the person wants it and in the word the store will take, on paper both of you keep — the assignment page has the clause, and the split sheet is not where it goes. On the release side, the list of names and roles is checked before the upload and again on the audit, against the panels. A name nobody typed is a name nobody wrote down first.

FAQ

Can I add my name to someone else’s release myself?

No. Every store takes its credits from the label or distributor’s delivery, and a distributor takes edits from the account that uploaded the release. A contributor without that account asks the account holder, in writing, with the ISRC, the spelling and the role, and the account holder resubmits.

Does a missing credit mean I am not being paid?

No; a credit and a registration are different records. A performer’s or writer’s money comes from registrations with SoundExchange, a performing rights organisation, The MLC or the Canadian societies, and none of them reads a store’s credits panel. Register whether or not the panel is ever fixed.

Can a credit be removed once it is up?

Yes, by the same route: the account holder resubmits the credits without the name, and the distributor redelivers. In Canada, a performer’s and an author’s right to remain anonymous sits in the same sentence of the Copyright Act as the right to be named.

Does a credit on MusicBrainz, Genius or Discogs reach Spotify or Apple Music?

No. Spotify and Apple both say their credits come from the label or distributor’s delivery, and neither names any public database as a source. A public database is a record you can write yourself; it is not a delivery.

Sources

• Spotify, Clickable song credits on Spotify — that all credits are shown from the metadata a label or distributor sends; the correction route through the label or distributor; the seven days; and that some distributors do not support credits yet.
• Spotify for Artists, Fixing problems with music metadata — “Credits” as its own line on the list a distributor’s update fixes, and that Spotify cannot change metadata manually because it shows music according to the metadata sent.
• Apple Music Provider Support, Deliver credits to Apple Music — credits delivered with the release; the attempt to match an unknown role to the most similar credit; iTunes Connect and Transporter; and the five business days.
• Apple, Apple Music Style Guide — §2.16, that personnel are credited rather than a production company or studio; §2.18, that unknown or anonymous credits are omitted and placeholders such as TBD or Pending are never submitted.
• TIDAL Support, Artist Resources — that the distributor or label is the artist’s best point of contact.
• DDEX Knowledge Base, IsCredited and MayBeShared — that most musicians want to be credited and there are exceptions; the IsCredited flag in the Contribution composite and its MayBeShared attribute; that an absent flag is equivalent to true; the four combinations and what a recipient does with each; the session-musician example; and that the data may always be used for sales and usage reporting.
• DDEX Knowledge Base, Role code synonyms and credits — the display credit string that may replace the standard credit, with the fiddle example.
• DistroKid, Adding a Producer to a Release — that producer credits can be added from the account’s Credits page at any time, even to a live release, and submitted to streaming services from there.
• DistroKid, Why Does DistroKid Ask For Songwriters’ Real Names? — that songwriters are typically credited by their real names, shown in a song’s credits or lyrics view.
• CD Baby, How do I add artist credits to my release? — that roles cannot be added retroactively to a release that has already been distributed.
• Recording Academy Producers & Engineers Wing, Credits and Recording Metadata (dated 27 September 2021 on its face) — that too often complete and visible credits are lacking; that the producer, in collaboration with the artist, assigns credits and supplies the crediting information; and its minimum credits list.
• 17 U.S.C. § 106A (Cornell LII) — the attribution right of the author of a work of visual art.
• Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003) (Cornell LII) — that “origin of goods” refers to the producer of the tangible goods offered for sale, not the author of what they embody; the videotape; and that section 106A’s attribution right attaches only to works of visual art.
• U.S. Copyright Office, Authors, Attribution, and Integrity: Examining Moral Rights in the United States (report dated 23 April 2019; the summary page is cited) — the Office’s statement that the framework continues to provide important protections, with room for improvement.
• Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42, s. 14.1 (Justice Laws) — the author’s right, where reasonable in the circumstances, to be associated with the work by name or pseudonym and to remain anonymous; not assignable, waivable.
• Copyright Act (Canada), ss. 17.1 and 17.2 — the performer’s equivalent right, its qualifier, the waiver rule, and that it applies only to performances after the subsection came into force.
• Copyright Act (Canada), s. 28.1 — that any act or omission contrary to moral rights, absent consent, is an infringement.
• MusicBrainz, About — a community-maintained, open source encyclopedia of music information, to which anyone can contribute.

Every page cited here was read on the date at the top of this piece. Store pages and distributor help pages change without notice; the help centres of DistroKid, CD Baby and Tidal serve their articles to a plain fetch only through their own API, and MusicBrainz asks a script for a browser check, so a reader checking by hand may meet one first. Nothing on this page is legal advice about your session: the two statutes are quoted with their own qualifiers, and a lawyer is the person who applies them to your facts.

Keeping the register

The message in the third section is written from a list, and the list is the thing nobody keeps: every person on every track, spelled once, on the role the store will take. CatalogTracker keeps it — per-track and per-release credits on a contributor vocabulary of nineteen roles, with a history of who changed what and what it said before, and an import that reads credits from MusicBrainz and Credits.fm. It does not read a store’s panel and it does not deliver anything. It is the copy of what was agreed, so the ask goes out with the ISRC, the spelling and the role already right. In development for iPhone.