The intended audience of this document is music partners who want to do either/both of the following:
- Create Art Tracks for YouTube Premium.
- Upload Music Videos to their channel(s).
- Manage rights to sound recordings and/or music videos through YouTube’s Content ID system.
YouTube supports Version 3.4 - 3.8 of the DDEX Electronic Release Notification (ERN) standard. This document describes specific requirements for the YouTube Music DDEX feed. For a general introduction to DDEX, see the Music Metadata Style Guide from the Music Business Association. For details about the DDEX ERN standard, see ddex.net. All feeds delivered to YouTube should follow either the Audio Album profile or the Single Resource Release profile, as published by DDEX.
Every DDEX ERN message includes four top-level elements:
<MessageHeader>provides information about the message itself: a unique identification number, the sender and recipient, and a timestamp.<ResourceList>contains the details about the sound recordings and associated artwork.<ReleaseList>defines the releases that can be made from the resources in this message.<DealList>defines the key commercial information for each release, such as which territories the release can be made available in, usage rights, and start date for each release.
DDEX Art Track packages are processed in the order they are received, based on the timestamp of the BatchComplete file that completes the package.
In accordance with the DDEX convention, the filename of the DDEX file needs to include the unique Release ID for the album. The Release ID is the UPC, EAN, or GRid provided by the <ReleaseId> element.