How does a label put a back catalog online?

created by studio raine

put a back catalog online one release at a time, with a real page per record rather than a single discography list. each page needs the recording identified, the credits and artwork attached, the rights and territories known, and a way to buy or listen. the gathering is the slow part. the pages themselves should be generated from that data, not typed.

what does it take to put a back catalog online?

three passes, in this order. gather what exists about each release, decide what a release page has to show, then generate the pages from the data rather than building them one by one. Studio Raine works catalog projects that way because the writing and the design are finished once, while the gathering is the part that scales with the number of records.

the mistake is starting with the design. a catalog of two hundred records designed page by page is a project that never finishes, and the version that does finish is a single long list nobody can link to, search for or sell from.

what does each release need before it can have a page?

the recording identified by its ISRC, the release identified by its own code, artwork at a size that survives a modern screen, the credits, the territories the rights actually cover, and the audio or the links a visitor can play. Studio Raine treats that set as the intake form for a catalog build, because a release missing any of it becomes a page that has to be revisited by hand.

the codes matter more than they look. they are what lets a page match the same recording on a streaming service, a royalty statement and a distributor's report without a human deciding whether two similar titles are the same song.

sources, each checked on the date shown: isrc.ifpi.org, the official ISRC site (2026-08-17).

ISRC enables sound recordings and music videos to be uniquely and permanently identified.

IFPI, the official ISRC site

sources, each checked on the date shown: isrc.ifpi.org, the official ISRC site (2026-08-17).

should every release get its own page?

yes, if you want any of them found. a page per release gives each record its own address, its own title, its own credits and its own structured data, which is what a search engine and an answer engine can cite. a single discography page gives them one address for two hundred records and no way to prefer any of them.

the same split helps a human. a label sending a record to a supervisor, a journalist or a buyer sends one link that opens on that record instead of a list to scroll. Studio Raine builds catalog properties this way for that reason, and the release page becomes the thing every later campaign points at.

what is the metadata actually doing?

Identifying

the ISRC names the recording and the release code names the product, so the same record can be matched across a streaming service, a statement and a report without anybody eyeballing two similar titles.

Moving

DDEX standards are how release information travels between labels, distributors and services. a catalog built on those fields can be delivered and updated rather than retyped into each system that asks for it.

Getting found

credits, dates, roles and rights on a page are what make it citable by a search engine and readable by an answer engine. a page that states who played on a record can be quoted. a page with an artwork and a title cannot.

sources, each checked on the date shown: ddex.net, about DDEX (2026-08-17), isrc.ifpi.org, the official ISRC site (2026-08-17).

why generate the pages instead of building them?

because a catalog is a data problem wearing a design problem's clothes. one page template, filled by the records you already hold, produces two hundred consistent pages in the time it takes to argue about the first three.

it also survives being wrong. a credit that turns out to be missing gets fixed in the record and every page carrying it updates, rather than being hunted down across two hundred hand-built files nobody has a list of.

Studio Raine runs its own factory on exactly that principle: one deployment, a demo per lead, each one generated from a single system rather than assembled by hand. the same machinery is what makes a property per release affordable for a catalog of any size.

the payoff arrives on the day something changes. a new distributor, a reissue, a corrected split or a fresh artwork is a field, not a rebuild, and the label stops paying somebody by the hour to keep its own history accurate.

what about releases where the rights are unclear?

publish the ones you are sure of and keep a hold list for the rest, rather than stalling the whole project on the messy quarter of it. a catalog build that waits for perfect rights information waits forever, because the unclear ones are usually the oldest and the least documented.

Studio Raine scopes a catalog engagement so the storefront switches on per release, which means a record with a disputed split can have a page that plays and credits without a buy button until the question is settled. the alternative, a catalog nobody can see while a lawyer works through it, earns nothing in the meantime.

the records page is one worked example: every placement listed, every claim linked to where it came from.

message us DM the studio see a catalog laid out

the questions people actually search.

what is an isrc and does every recording need one?

an ISRC is the international standard recording code, and the official ISRC site describes it as what enables sound recordings and music videos to be uniquely and permanently identified. every commercially released recording should carry one, assigned once and kept for the life of that recording, including when it is reissued or licensed elsewhere. for a label putting a back catalog online it is the field that lets a release page, a royalty statement and a streaming service all agree they are talking about the same recording, which is the difference between a catalog and a folder of audio files.

sources, each checked on the date shown: isrc.ifpi.org, the official ISRC site (2026-08-17).

what is ddex and does a label need to care about it?

DDEX is a not-for-profit membership organisation that creates the standards used to communicate release information across the digital music industry, covering things like release notification, sales reporting and rights data. a label mostly meets it through a distributor rather than directly. it matters when a catalog is being built, because a site whose release data follows those field definitions can be delivered and updated through the same pipes the industry already runs on, instead of being a separate copy of the truth that drifts from the distributor's version.

sources, each checked on the date shown: ddex.net, about DDEX (2026-08-17).

how many pages should a catalog site have?

one per release, one per artist, and a storefront across all of them. that is the shape that lets each record be linked, indexed and sold on its own while the roster still reads as one label. Studio Raine builds catalog properties with the pages generated from the release data rather than hand-built, so the count is a consequence of the catalog rather than a budget decision. a hundred releases means a hundred addresses somebody can send, cite or buy from, and none of them costs a separate build.

is it worth putting an old catalog online at all?

it is worth it when the catalog can be sold, licensed or cited, which covers most of them. an old record with a page can be found by a supervisor searching a title, bought by somebody who heard it somewhere, and pointed at by every later release the label puts out. a record with no page exists only inside services that decide what to show. Studio Raine treats the back catalog as inventory that already exists and has already been paid for, which is a rare thing in a business that mostly spends on the record that has not come out yet.