Intellectual Property Office (UK)

This urgent critique of the music‑streaming ecosystem argues that metadata failures and fragmented rights infrastructures have become structural, not incidental. The UK Intellectual Property Office’s 2026 Music Streaming Metadata Mapping Report (Dennis P Collopy) documents systemic breakdowns: splits among multiple co‑writers are often not agreed at creation, identifiers are inconsistently used, and disparate databases and owners produce multiple, conflicting versions of the truth. Rapid mass release—over 100,000 tracks uploaded daily in 2025—exacerbates the problem, pushing millions of recordings into systems unprepared to verify attribution. The report states under 0.1% of recordings arrive with a confirmed ISRC–ISWC link, meaning over 99.9% lack a system‑level verified connection between recording and composition at delivery. Consequences include missing credits, delayed or misdirected payments, black‑box royalties, and degraded discovery—harming emerging artists, songwriters and session musicians most, while well‑resourced acts generally secure corrections.

Attempts at coordination (working groups, a Technical Solutions Group) have so far failed to create accountability; responsibility is blurred across labels, publishers, distributors, platforms and collection societies. The author insists the system needs rebuilding, not cosmetic fixes. He outlines three non‑negotiable reforms: accurate metadata at source; enforceable, not voluntary, standards across the chain; and clear accountability for data quality and remediation. Without these, the multi‑billion‑pound streaming economy will continue to distribute value without reliably identifying who created the work. It also condemns entrenched power imbalances among executives and governance bodies that perpetuate exclusion, notably of women and marginalised creators, and notes the report’s value in finally documenting long‑standing failures and forcing an accountability choice.