An Open Letter for an Open Music Release Standard
To SoundCloud, Bandcamp, YouTube, Audiomack, DSP-facing platforms, distributors, label services, DAWs, mastering tools, NFT marketplaces, rights organizations, and the wider music community: artists need a release system that belongs to them.
The current release stack asks musicians to trust closed dashboards, private forms, unclear identifier access, support queues, and repeated metadata entry for the same work. Some of that friction comes from real rights complexity. Too much of it comes from lock-in. The result is an exhausting user experience where artists can upload music, but still lose control of the release record that describes their work.
Chosen Masters is building Open Release Packet as a free and open source standard so the music file, metadata, credits, splits, artwork, identifiers, rights notes, verification signals, and platform targets can travel together. This is not anti-platform. It is anti-lock-in. Platforms should compete on service, reach, monetization, discovery, trust, and tooling, not on trapping the artist's release data.
A necessary boundary:
Open Release Packet does not fake official ISRC, UPC, DDEX, MLC, or DSP access. Those rails still require authorized channels. The standard makes the artist's release record complete, portable, reviewable, and ready for adapters when official access exists.
What we are asking platforms to do
Accept portable release packets
Let artists import a complete release record instead of retyping credits, contributors, splits, artwork, identifiers, and rights details in every dashboard.
Export what artists entered
If a platform collects release data, artists should be able to download that data in a useful, documented format without begging support.
Separate identity from delivery
A release packet should survive even when delivery access, distributor relationships, stores, or monetization tools change.
Support verification without surveillance
Public registries should prove enough to compare claims, but they should not expose private files, raw fingerprints, stems, or personal dispute evidence by default.
Why this helps artists
A portable release packet gives artists a source of truth before any distributor, store, marketplace, or rights service touches the release. It lets them download a working record, share it with a collaborator, send it to a reviewer, prepare official registration data, and move between services without rebuilding the release from zero.
It also makes direct artist sales stronger. If a musician sells on Chosen Masters, their release should already carry the credits, splits, artwork, rights notes, open recording IDs, and future official identifier fields needed for a proper release package. Selling music should not mean abandoning the professional record that the rest of the industry expects.
The public registry needs a careful design
A public registry can help platforms verify that a song already has a public claim, compare waveform fingerprints, reduce duplicate fraud, and make release history easier to inspect. But a registry can also become a new gatekeeper if it exposes too much, charges too much, or treats private evidence as public property.
Public
- Release title, artist name, public open release ID, public open recording IDs, status, official identifiers when the artist chooses to show them, and a link to the artist-controlled packet page.
- Searchable only when the artist opts in.
Verification API
- A compare endpoint that accepts a submitted fingerprint and returns confidence buckets or possible public matches.
- No raw waveform peaks, private source hashes, stem URLs, or private duplicate candidates in public responses.
Private Evidence
- Original files, source hashes, stems, collaborator approvals, dispute records, takedown notes, payout details, and private ownership evidence.
- Visible only to the artist, authorized collaborators, reviewers, or a dispute process with clear rules.
The goal is not to make a "bulletproof" ownership oracle. No upload timestamp, waveform hash, stem file, or AI analysis can prove every rights question alone. The goal is to make fraud harder, make claims easier to compare, and make disputes more transparent without turning artist data into another private toll road.
How this should be governed
Chosen Masters can bootstrap the standard, but the long-term registry should not depend on one company's goodwill. If this becomes useful beyond our platform, it should move toward an independent nonprofit or public-benefit steward with clear rules.
- No pay-to-claim model where wealth decides who can register a release.
- No exclusive ownership of the standard by one platform, distributor, label, or rights society.
- No public release record that pretends upload time alone proves ownership.
- No silent takedowns without review, notice, and a documented appeal path.
- No selling artist registry data as a moat around the ecosystem.
- Open schemas, open validators, open changelogs, and public issue discussions.
What we are building next
- Keep Open Release Packet free, documented, and open source.
- Let artists export packets from Chosen Masters immediately.
- Add opt-in public registry pages for releases artists want searchable.
- Add privacy-preserving audio comparison so platforms can check for likely matches without exposing private waveform data.
- Create stronger review tooling for duplicate claims, stem evidence, collaborator approvals, and dispute states.
- Move long-term stewardship toward an independent nonprofit or public-benefit foundation once the standard has outside adopters.
A call to the music community
If you run a music platform, creator tool, marketplace, label service, royalty product, or artist community, help make portable release packets normal. Import them. Export them. Validate them. Build adapters. Add better fields. Challenge weak parts of the schema. Do it in the open.
Artists should not need permission to keep a complete record of their own releases. The industry already has enough closed doors. The next music release standard should be portable, inspectable, artist-owned, and free to implement.
Existing rails this standard should interoperate with
Official distribution and registration infrastructure still matters. Open Release Packet should map cleanly into systems such as DDEX ERN, ISRC, MLC work registration, and official UPC/GTIN providers. The difference is that the artist should own the packet first.