Alias metadata

DISCO's alias metadata feature lets you control what metadata on your tracks gets shared. Instead of all metadata going out on your playlists, with alias metadata you can set only certain metadata to display and be downloaded with your files. You can also overwrite metadata for a specific playlist.

Note that alias metadata is only available on Plus (at playlist level) and Pro (playlist and track level).

When would I use alias metadata?

Alias metadata is useful:

• when there is metadata on your tracks, like internal tags or notes or other people's contact info, that you'd prefer not to share with recipients

• when you'd like to make a compilation from existing tracks, but you want to send the compilation out with metadata (like cover art and album title) specific to that compilation

• when you'd like to change the metadata of a track for a particular recipient, without changing how the track appears inside your DISCO.

Setting alias metadata via user settings

If you'd like to have the same alias metadata settings for all the tracks you share, you can set this up in Settings. Open Settings from the top right menu, accessible under your name:

And click the Metadata settings tab:

Here, you can see six fields, for Artist, Album, Genre, Composer, Grouping, and Comments. If you uncheck any of these fields, this metadata field will be left blank on tracks you share (you can override your settings, if you need to, when saving a playlist – more on that below).

Turning off non-displayed metadata

Metadata settings has a checkbox for 'Do not include any metadata in fields that DISCO does not display.' There are a lot of fields in the id3 metadata tag standard that DISCO doesn't display. We do, however, read the metadata from these fields, and write them to files downloaded from DISCO. If you'd like us not to populate these other fields on your tracks, click this checkbox. You can also set this at the playlist level.

Custom message

At the bottom of the Metadata settings panel is a field that allows you to enter a custom message in the Comments metadata. If you check this option and enter a message, this will be included in the Comments metadata field of all tracks you share.

If a track already has Comments metadata, and you haven't turned the field off using the alias settings, the custom comment will be added to any existing metadata, in the following format:

Existing metadata // My custom comment

Sharing tracks

Your user alias settings will be enforced when you share individual tracks from your DISCO, via the track share URLs.

Setting alias metadata when saving your playlist

You can also set alias metadata when saving your playlist. To set alias metadata settings on your playlist, when saving, click the Alias Metadata tab in the save pop up:

This will open a pop up where you can set alias metadata in two ways: Batch edit and Edit Individually.

Batch edit

Batch edit lets you apply alias metadata settings for metadata fields for all tracks in the playlist.

Say, for example, you wanted to send out a compilation, and add compilation artwork and album metadata. In the Batch edit tab, just upload the compilation artwork to the artwork field, and write in your album metadata:

Writing new metadata in a field like we've done with the album here will display and write that to these tracks just for this playlist, but not change the track's main metadata in DISCO. If you leave the box next to a field checked but don't enter a new value, it will be populated with its regular metadata.

In batch edit view, you can also switch off any fields you don't want populated on your tracks by unchecking the boxes next to the field names.

If you've set user alias settings (see Setting alias metadata via user settings above) these settings will be reflected in your playlist alias pop up. But you can overwrite these settings at the playlist level if you need to.

In the batch edit view, you'll see a checkbox that says 'Turn off any other metadata fields not displayed here':

There are a lot of fields in the id3 metadata tag standard that DISCO doesn't display. We do, however, read the metadata from these fields, and write them to files downloaded from DISCO. If you'd like us not to populate these other fields on your tracks, click this checkbox. You can also set this at user settings level.

Edit individually

The Edit individually tab lets you edit the alias metadata on tracks individually. Three fields are available in this view –– Title, Artist and Album:

Saving alias metadata

To save alias metadata for the playlist, click the 'Save metadata' button in the alias pop up, and then 'Save playlist' in the main save pop up. Please note your alias settings will only be saved once both these actions (saving the alias metadata and the playlist) are completed.

Removing alias metadata for a playlist

If you'd like to remove alias metadata for a playlist:

1. Open the playlist for editing

2. Open the alias metadata options via the 'View metadata options' link

3. Click 'Remove all alias metadata for this playlist'

4. In the confirmation dialog that appears, click 'Remove alias metadata'

5. Click Save metadata

6. Click Save playlist

What happens when I share a playlist with alias metadata to another DISCO?

If you share a playlist with alias metadata to another DISCO, either directly via DISCO share or by someone importing the files via Save to DISCO, only the alias metadata will be sent.

So if you switched off all fields but title, album and artist, only these fields would be populated in the receiver's DISCO.

Viewing previous alias metadata for tracks

You can view previously added alias metadata for tracks in the track metadata pop up. If a track has had one or more aliases saved, it will show a 'Show aliases' link at the bottom of the pop up:

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