Glossary
Plain-language explanations of music licensing, formats, and genres.
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Forms & Styles
30-Second Preview
A short, licensed clip offered by stores like Apple so listeners can sample a so…
Album
A collected release of several tracks by an artist, traditionally on vinyl, CD, …
B-Side
The secondary track on a single, historically the flip side of a vinyl record.
Concept Album
An album built around a unifying theme, story, or musical arc.
EP
An extended play: longer than a single but shorter than a full album.
Genre
A category that groups music by shared style, origin, or audience. Useful for br…
Live Recording
A capture of a performance as it happened, as opposed to a studio recording.
Remix
A reworked version of a track with altered arrangement, tempo, or production.
Single
A standalone track released on its own, often to promote an album.
Genres
Acoustic
Music performed with non-electric instruments, or unplugged versions of electric…
Ambient
Atmospheric, often beatless music designed for background listening and mood.
Latin Music
Music from Latin America and Spain, spanning reggaeton, salsa, bachata, and regi…
Lo-Fi
A relaxed production aesthetic with deliberate imperfections, popular for studyi…
World Music
A broad label for traditional and popular music from outside the Western pop mai…
Audio Technology
Bitrate
The amount of audio data per second. Higher bitrate generally means better sound…
Compression
Reducing a file’s size, either losslessly or by discarding some audio detail (lo…
Equalizer
A tool that adjusts the balance of frequency bands in audio.
ISRC
International Standard Recording Code: a unique identifier for a specific record…
Lossless Audio
Compression that preserves the full original sound quality, such as FLAC or Appl…
Metadata
The descriptive data attached to a track — title, artist, genre, and release dat…
Sample Rate
How many times per second audio is measured when digitized. CD quality is 44.1 k…
Streaming
Delivering audio over the internet on demand, rather than as a downloaded file.
Licensing & Business
Composition
The underlying musical work — melody, lyrics, and harmony — separate from any pa…
Creative Commons
A set of public copyright licenses that let creators share work with flexible, p…
Master Recording
The specific recorded version of a song, distinct from the underlying compositio…
Mechanical License
Permission to reproduce and distribute a musical composition, typically paid per…
Performance Rights
The right to perform a song in public. Collected by PROs such as ASCAP, BMI, and…
Public Domain
Works whose copyright has expired or never existed. They can be streamed, downlo…
Royalties
Payments made to rights holders each time a work is sold, streamed, or performed…
Sync License
A license to pair music with visual media such as film, TV, or advertising. Sepa…