Communicating titles in ERN and MEAD

Each music work, sound recording, music video and release has a Title. Some musical works, sound recordings, music videos and releases may have additional informal titles. One such example is the Beatles’ 1986 album “The Beatles”, which is often called the “White Album”.

The official title should always be the one that is communicated in an ERN message. The same applies for sound recordings or music videos that have different official titles in different languages and/or different territories. The same principle also applies to the formal title and the grouping title used for classical music.

All other additional titles should be communicated in MEAD. ERN should only be used for communicating such other additional titles if the sender and the recipient have not yet implemented MEAD.

To support this, DDEX expects that the tag for communicating AdditionalTitles will be removed in ERN 4.4 and new optional tags for the FormalTitle and the GroupingTitle will be added. However, at this stage there is no timetable for release of this version.