Credits on a ghazal release: how to name the poet, the composer and the singer

Credits on a ghazal release: how to name the poet, the composer and the singer

Open a ghazal on a streaming service and look for the poet's name. Often it is not there. The singer is credited as the artist, the composer may appear as a songwriter, and the poet, whose words the whole thing exists for, is nowhere. The platforms are not the reason. Every one of them has a field for the lyricist. The credit is missing because nobody typed it in.

Where credits come from

Streaming services do not research credits. Spotify's own help page says it shows all credits from the metadata the label or distributor sends, from producers and engineers to songwriters and featured artists. If the credits are wrong or missing, the fix is to ask the distributor to resend the metadata, and Spotify says corrected credits usually appear within seven days. It also notes that some distributors do not support credits at all.

So the credits on a release are decided at one moment: when the metadata is entered, by whoever uploads the release. If that is you at a distributor, the fields are in the upload form. If it is a label, the label's release manager fills them. Either way the three names have to be known, spelled as the people spell them, and put in the right roles.

The roles a ghazal needs

Apple Music's style guide, which labels and distributors follow for Apple Music and which most follow for everything else, separates the two halves of a song. The Composer role credits the creator of the music. The Lyrics role credits anyone who contributed to drafting the words. The Songwriter role is for when the two cannot be separated or the writers are unknown. A ghazal almost always can be separated, so it should carry a Composer and a Lyrics credit, not a single Songwriter.

The same guide has two rules written for Indian releases. Indian music must carry at least one Indian genre or subgenre on the album. For Indian classical albums, music directors must be listed with the Composer role on each track. A ghazal release in the Indian classical or Indian genres should follow both.

Spotify's metadata guide names the key roles as main artists, featured artists, remixers, composers, lyricists and producers. The singer is the main artist. The composer and lyricist go in their own roles. A harmonium or tabla player goes in as a performer credit if the distributor offers one, and in the liner notes if not.

Real names, and one spelling

Writer credits need real names because the platforms and the royalty societies match them. DistroKid's help centre asks for songwriters' real names so that stores credit them correctly, and lets a songwriter's IPI number from a rights society be attached to the credit. A poet known by a takhallus, a pen name, should be credited under it in the artist-facing credit and under the legal name where the form asks for one.

Pick one Roman spelling for each name and use it on every release. Faraz and Faraaz are two different people to a database. The spelling the poet or the poet's publisher uses in print is the one to copy.

Titles and words in Urdu and Hindi

For lyrics in Indian languages, Apple's guide asks for a romanised copy as the primary lyric, with the original script as an optional separate attachment. Urdu is written in a Perso-Arabic script and the guide's wording is about Brahmic scripts, so treat Urdu the same way until the guide says otherwise: romanised first, original script attached. Give the title in the romanisation the audience searches for, and keep it consistent between the audio release and the YouTube video.

YouTube, where a ghazal is usually found first

On YouTube the recording and the song are two different assets in Content ID. A sound recording asset carries the ISRC, the artist and the album. A composition share asset carries the writers and the ISWC, the song's own code. Writers live on the composition, not the video, and the composition is delivered by an aggregator or publisher, not typed into a video's description.

For the viewer, the description is the credit. Put the poet, the composer, the singer and the players in the first lines of the description, in the same spelling as the audio release. BeatRootRaga does this on every release and names the same people on the release page here, and a credit is published only once the person has confirmed it.

The two codes

Every recording carries an ISRC, a twelve-character code that identifies that recording everywhere, and every release carries a UPC barcode. India's national ISRC agency is the Indian Music Industry, but you will rarely need it. DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby all state that they issue ISRCs and UPCs at no charge when you leave the fields blank. Keep a note of the ISRC once issued: it is how royalties for that recording are matched for the rest of its life.

A checklist at upload

• Main artist: the singer, spelled as on every other release.
• Composer role: the person who set the words to music.
• Lyrics role: the poet, under the name they publish under, with the legal name where asked.
• Performer credits for the players where the form has them, liner notes where it does not.
• At least one Indian genre or subgenre on the album.
• Romanised lyrics as the primary lyric, original script attached.
• Leave ISRC and UPC blank unless you already have them; record the ISRC when it is issued.
• The same names in the YouTube description, first lines.