Uploading music submissions

last updated 18th September 2022

Overview

Members are currently testing a beta version of the new Dashboard. Once ready, the Dashboard will replace the current music submission process. Artists will then be able to self-upload, manage their music, and check analytics & earnings. Until development and testing are finished, music uploads are handled by a volunteer crew of members: some artists, some listeners.

Bugs and errors

Since it is still under construction, the Artist Dashboard has a variety of bugs and unituitive elements. This guide will help you navigate those issues while uploading. If you encounter bugs or odd design elements, share your thoughts in the Artist Dashboard area:

Who this guide is for

This guide is for Uploaders ā€“ those who wish to help upload music on behalf of artists as a way to build Resonate.

How to become an Uploader

Please read through this guide, then introduce yourself below.

First, create a new basic Resonate Listener account. Weā€™ll switch this to an Uploader account, giving you access to music submissions and the Dashboard.

To track your work and update the Uploads Spreadsheet, weā€™ll email edit access to you. Could be the same email as above.

Request access to join uploaders and include the following emails in your message:

  • new Resonate Listener Account email address
  • whatever email address you want Uploads Spreadsheet access sent to

Current Uploaders

Process & Schedule

Uploaders can upload submissions whenever they like. An upload takes 5-15 minutes once you know the process and depending on if the submission is a single, EP, or album.

Checking a submission

All submissions processed by Uploaders will be tracked in the Uploads Spreadsheet.

When the Upload Coordinator receives email notification that a new release submission entry has been added to the New Release Submission Form, they will transcribe the information from the form entry to the uploaded tab of the Uploads Spreadsheet.

Each row that does not have a name in the Uploader column is a submission that needs uploading. All others are either in progress or complete. (If you see ā€˜Upcoordā€™ in this column, that means the Upload Coordinator is working with the artist to resolve any problems with their submissions.)

Processing a submission

When choosing submissions, start with the oldest ones (lower Entry No. value and older Timestamp value) not the most recent.

  1. Enter your uploader name in the Uploader column for the submission you will process. This is how we track which submissions are being processed.
  2. Visit the link in the Link to submission column. Download all files.
  • Some artists will send a locked submission. If locked, request access to it and say youā€™re with Resonate. When the artist grants access, continue work from there. Leave a note on the Resonate Uploads spreadsheet that you are waiting for access.
  1. Check the submission for compatibility and required metadata (see below).
  2. Final step:
  • If the submission is not compatible, leave a note explaining the problem(s) on the Resonate Uploads spreadsheet.
  • If the submission is compatible:
    a. Record the following information from the submissionā€™s metadata spreadsheet to the Resonate Uploads spreadsheet for the release: the Artist name, the Release title, and the Release Date.
    b. Upload it right away (see section below: Uploading a Submission).

Checking a submission for compatibility

  • All audio track files are in either FLAC, WAV, or AIFF format
  • Album artwork is 1:1 square in JPEG, JPG, or PNG format with minimum dimensions of 1400Ɨ1400 pixels. Maximum dimensions are 3500Ɨ3500 pixels. Maximum file size is 5 MB.
  • Metadata spreadsheet: has required metadata for release-level and track-level
  • Metadata spreadsheet: audio files are the same as the ones listed

There is a known bug where some upload workers are unable to upload AIFF files. Some workers have the issue, some donā€™t. Still a mystery why.

Required release-level metadata

  • Release Artist
  • Release Title
  • Release Year
  • Release Composer
  • Total number of tracks on the release
  • Release Type ā€“ Single, EP, or Album

Required metadata for each track

  • Track title
  • Track filename
  • The sequence number of each track (so that we know the correct order of the tracks within the release)

Walkthrough

  1. While uploading, record any bugs in the Artist Dashboard category here on the Forum. Start a new Topic for each issue.
  2. Log in via your Uploader Account at dash.resonate.coop.
  3. Go to (All) Releases Page.
  4. Click [Create New Release].
  5. On Create New Release Page, complete fields from top to bottom. Completing entries in a different order can lead to glitches. After completing all entries and clicking the two confirmation boxes at the bottom, [continue] will become clickable.
  6. Now on the newly-created Release Page, click [Upload New Tracks] under the Tracks section.
  7. Upload tracks either one at a time or all at once. Sometimes track titles will be autocompleted from embedded metadata in the audio file. If not, the entry box will default to displaying the trackā€™s filename and will need to be corrected.
  8. Click [Edit tracks info] at the bottom of the page. On the Track Metadata page, one-by-one change each trackā€™s monetisation setting to Paid (unless Free is requested).
  9. Under the three-dot menu at the left of the main header, go to Tracks Page. One-by-one, change ownership of each track for the release to the artist, using the artist email included on their metadata spreadsheet.
  10. Return to Release Page; change ownership of Release to artistā€™s account.
  11. On Release Page, uncheck [private].
  12. On Release Page, check [enable].

Youā€™re done!

Record completion of your work in the Uploaded, unless otherwise noted column of the Uploads Spreadsheet.

Details details details

Covers and Remixes

Resonate accepts covers and remixes where the artist has accepted responsibility and confirmed they have the appropriate rights. Artists or their representatives claim this responsibility via the checkboxes on the wordpress submission form.

When uploading these submissions via the Dashboard, you will have to tick the appropriate checkboxes, even though they say no covers and no remixes. These check boxes will be updated with new language before the Dashboard goes public.

While changing ownership of Releases and Tracks

Use the artistā€™s email address rather than searching for them by name. Sometimes an artist has multiple Resonate accounts.

While copy/pasting infomation to complete fields

Watch out for unintentional spaces at the ends of what you copy/pasted.

If artist only included year on Release Date, what do I put for month and day?

Put 01 and 01 for month and day.

Formatting genre tags

Write all genre tags as single compound words in lowercase, for example ā€œhip-hopā€ and ā€œhip hopā€ become ā€œhiphopā€. ā€œIndie Electronicā€ becomes ā€œindieelectronicā€.

On the Create New Release page, there is information appearing from the last Release I created. What do I do?

Refresh the page via your browser. This will clear all the fields on the page. Donā€™t delete entries manually, as ā€œghostā€ data can remain. Ghost data is a term I just made up and is probably not a real thing.

Keep an eye out for different styles of entry boxes:

  • Some confirm entry after clicking elsewhere. Example: Album Artist on Create New Release Page.
  • Some can save multiple entries, but each entry has to be confirmed via adjacent button. Example: adding genre tags on Create New Release Page.
  • Some will search our database based upon text entered; an item from pop-up needs to be clicked in order to confirm. Sometimes these fields will autofill based upon previous selections on other pages, however, you still need to type in the info again and click the pop-up in order to save the info. Example: change ownership.

Iā€™m both an artist and an upload volunteer. Can I use the upload tool to upload my own releases without asking permission?

Yes, but only if you already have music on Resonate. Otherwise, we need to get you onboarded first. If you already have music on Resonate and feel confident that you know how to use the upload tool, feel free to upload more of your own music without asking permission.

Donā€™t forget to:

  • add the releases to the Uploads Spreadsheet
  • change ownership to your Artist Account for each track and release you upload

Iā€™m both an artist and an upload volunteer. Can I use the upload tool to upload other artistsā€™ releases without asking permission?

No, because there are still onboarding steps we need to go through with each artist before they upload music. Weā€™ll want to check first that they have created an artist profile on Resonate. We also need confirmation from each artist that they want their music on Resonate. The Music Submission Form is a way for us to confirm this.

If you know an artist who wants their music on Resonate and they have an upcoming release with an approaching release date that they want on Resonate ā€“ chat with the upload coordinator about expediting its upload. We can usually make these deadlines.

Accessing the Legacy Artist Uploader page

Before we transitioned to the New Release Submission (Google Form), artists submitted upload requests via Wordpress. If you need to access the legacy Artist Uploader page on Wordpress (e.g. to complete processing an upload that needed further action from the artist):

  1. First, log in via your Uploader Account at https://resonate.is.
  2. To reach the submissions area, visit this link: Log In ā€¹ Resonate ā€” WordPress
7 Likes

Sorry Iā€™m late but thanks Hakanto! Gonna do some uploading today.

2 Likes

@Uploaders This guide has been updated.

You can now upload all tracks for a release at once rather than uploading them one at a time!!! :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face:

Still keep an eye on if they upload in the right order and have the correct names though.

Also, some buttons and pages on the Dashboard have been renamed to make their purpose clearer. Should be more intuitive than before. Thank you to @boopboop for these edits.

@Uploaders Yā€™all are legends. If you have any questions while uploading, comment below.

4 Likes

Newbie question: If the artwork dimensions are within the correct range but the file size is larger than 5MB, is it acceptable for me to process it so it meets both requirements? Or do I just log the problem on the spreadsheet and move on to the next submission?

Good question. Yeah, resizing them is fine. Iā€™ve done the same plenty of times. But if you donā€™t feel like resizing it and prefer to move on, just leave a note in the uploads spreadsheet that the image size is too big.

1 Like

Another newbie questionā€¦

The trackā€™s metadata page has fields for Album, Cover Art, Year, and Composer but they are blank. Should I fill them in, or will that metadata be auto-populated with the information I entered for the album in the previous step?

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Leave em blank. The only thing to check for is if by chance they are autofilled with info that is different from what you put in the Release info. For example, if the album title was different.

If the info is different, delete it.

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OK, getting started here. Iā€™m trying to figure out from which entry I should be starting, corresponding to the oldest submission thatā€™s not been processed yet.

If I go back to the very last page, the entries date from 2018.

Now, I presume I should rather be looking for the oldest entry which still has a grey ā€œstarā€, starting from the first page (which right now would be #25933) - and looking at the Resonate Uploads sheet, that seems to be where I should be starting. Did I get this right?

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Exactly right. When you open up a gray star entry and write up its basic info in the Uploads spreadsheet, click the gray star to turn it yellow. Thatā€™s how we track which submissions have been opened or not

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I was wondering about the track metadata fields, but saw @remst8ā€™s question and @Hakantoā€™s reply right after posting :stuck_out_tongue:

On the same vein though - is there any place we should enter the individual track metadata info from the excel submission form?

2 Likes

At this time, no. That considered, it seems we should remove those fields from the Metadata Template, since those items donā€™t have a corresponding entry boxes on the Dashboard yet.

Iā€™ll make that change ā€“ it will save artists time filling it out.

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I was curious about our migration strategy once those fields have been implemented.

Iā€™m relatively new to paying attention to the upload mechanics, but I thought I saw that spreadsheet was ā€œrecentlyā€ updated to add collection of details like ISRCs. Doesnā€™t it seem like a bit of thrashing to remove them? Or have there been backlog grooming meetings where implementation of those fields have been pushed way out into the distant future?

2 Likes

Not sure if this is the right place but in a bit of a mess with one of the uploads.

A couple of uncommon things all at once. Usually, but not always, tracks for upload, are numbered. This makes uploading say 10 at once, in the right order, easy, through drag and drop.

Even if not numbered/in order, itā€™s simple enough to reorder whilst renaming/checking titles.

The other factor is that sometimes, though not often, audio files have track titles embedded within them which the upload form extracts. When this happens, weā€™ll cross-reference with the metadata spreadsheet in case of mistakes etc.

Usually, though, thereā€™s no embedded title, and we can copy/paste the title from the spreadsheet. In these cases, the filename auto-populates in the title field and itā€™s simple to overwrite this.

In this particular case though, the audio files were not in order, and I dragged and dropped them all together expecting to reorder and rename.

Unfortunately, nearly all tracks had the embedded title ā€˜untitled (Master)ā€™ and so there was no way to figure out which track was which.

Iā€™m not specifically suggesting including these tools but I mightā€™ve been able to figure it out if I could also see the file names, or duration, or play the tracks back. Itā€™s an edge case but thought it worth reporting.

The next thing I needed to do was basically remove all the uploaded files and start again, one at a time. When you click the ā€˜Xā€™ it removes but doesnā€™t delete the track and now thereā€™s a bunch of untitled, unassigned, tracks floating around in the backend. These will need deleting at some point.

Finally, during the reuploading, one-by-one, process, the uploader kept getting stuck. The green progress bar would stay filled after a track is uploaded and a further upload wouldnā€™t work. If I refreshed the page I could upload again but needed to do this for each and every track. This isnā€™t behaviour Iā€™ve encountered previously but again, thought it worth reporting.

1 Like

I think this is cool to share here as not publically accessible, these are what will need deleting:

* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23227
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23236
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23230
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23229
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23228
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23231
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23230
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23227
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23233
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23232
* https://dash.resonate.coop/user/admin/tracks/23229

+1 for diplaying the filename along with the assigned title for uploaded tracks. Makes total sense to me as a ā€œstupid-proofā€ check, for readabilityā€™s sake, since this involves a lot of manual back-and-forth between files and uploaders, making sure the track order is good, etc.

  1. I noticed the date format from the uploader versus the excel submission sheet are different (one is yyyy-mm-dd and the other is mm-dd-yyyy if I recall correctly.) It would be helpful to make them the same to prevent mistakes.

  2. Iā€™m a bit concerned with missing a ā€œPaidā€ checkbox when finishing the track uploads. Each track shows a lot of ā€œdeprecatedā€ or currently unused fields right now that make an at-a-glance check (in this case, making sure ā€œPaidā€ is checked for all tracks) difficult to do. Would it be possible to maybe collapse the individual tracks so it only shows the Title and the payment scheme checkboxes?

1 Like

What I mean is to be able to collapse this:

ā€¦into this (by default, expandable to show the additional fields if needed):
image

2 Likes

I second this.

My preference is for YYYY-MM-DD everywhereā€”because Iā€™m from the UK and MM-DD-YYYY seems weird to me but I also acknowledge, if youā€™re in the US, DD-MM-YYYY will be weird for you.

NB: I often find myself double-checking releases on Bandcamp or Discogs etc. If someone puts, e.g., 02-08-2020, on the metadata spreadsheet, Iā€™m not confident between 2nd Aug or 8th Feb. Just a tip for other uploaders if it helpsā€¦ Iā€™m sure youā€™ve got this already though :+1:.

1 Like

Another option is to add the payment scheme checkboxes for each track to the release view which lists them. ā€¦And maybe buttons like ā€œSet all tracks to Paidā€.

EDIT: Oops - we should probably post suggestions for improvements in the Dashboard hub.

1 Like

Yep, Iā€™ve gathered them here - Fixing dashboard to be ready for artists - #7 by thehouseorgan

2 Likes

@Hakanto - One more newbie question: If any track titles indicate additional performers/composers were involved, but the metadata spreadsheet only has the Release Composerā€™s legal name, should that submission be rejected until the additional names are provided?