Behind the scenes of modern entertainment — how metadata fuels streaming success in 2021

The entertainment world is changing. 

Is that too much of an understatement?

Few industries have been completely turned over in the way that entertainment has. Everything, from the way viewers pay for and consume media, to the way media is produced and distributed, and the data and metadata that matters — nothing is the same as it was just five years ago, let alone ten. 

In 2020, the number of Brits subscribing to streaming services was double that of those signed up to traditional providers, like Sky or BT. This, in a year where entertainment screen time was up overall , is a real wake-up call for broadcasters who are slow to respond to changing customer needs.

The growing importance of metadata in the entertainment industry is just one advancement that businesses from Hulu to BBC have to be up to speed on. But it’s arguably one of the most important advancements indeed.

The basics of metadata in entertainment

In short, TV and film metadata is any data tied to an entertainment product that isn’t the product itself. For instance, who stars in this movie? What’s the synopsis? When did it come out? Who directed it, what genre is it in, and is it best watched alone or with friends?

This kind of metadata is vital in the online realm, where discoverability is key. Any eCommerce site, blog, or YouTube mogul can tell you the importance of discoverability — it’s how content is searched for and marketed on the internet, and it’s truly make or break.

TV and film metadata can also refer to research metrics associated with a piece of content. For example, reviews, view counts, watch times, and more are all a component of entertainment metadata. And that’s really just the beginning.

rom a marketing perspective, Metadata doesn’t just describe what a piece of entertainment content is, but it helps you come up with and organise the metrics for that description. Without metadata, you have no bridge between your content and your audience — and you have zero discoverability as a result.

The different types of entertainment metadata and how it can be enriched

One of the perks of entertainment metadata is that it comes in all shapes and sizes. Thanks to the sheer breadth of entertainment metadata, we have to define and structure it into different categories. This allows you to apply your metadata strategy more effectively, which is critical for success.

Here are just a few of the broad groups that TV and film metadata can fall under. 

Entertainment metadata for content discovery

The first type of TV and film metadata is metadata for content discovery. This is any piece of data that improves the searchability and discoverability of a piece of media. On the surface, this includes things like the title, brand or genre. 

However, discovery metadata isn’t just about aiding the process of finding content — it also ensures that content is more compelling once it’s discovered. This means that it can also be enriched with other sources such as images, synopses, trailers, behind-the-scenes content, as well as where to watch it. 

Pulling metadata for entertainment from existing sources (like IMDb)

Another kind of metadata is that which is pulled from existing sources. IMDb is the most well-known online resource for this. Businesses can link to it through an API, automatically creating, updating, verifying and controlling the key information associated with content your service uses. 

The benefit of working with existing metadata resources is that they’ve already done most of the heavy lifting for you. Using this kind of metadata can significantly accelerate the discoverability and viewing of your content  in just a few hours. 

Archival and descriptive metadata from throughout the years

Archival and descriptive entertainment metadata is data that’s pulled from a media’s broadcasting history. You can use it to share details like when a piece of content first aired, some performance metrics from its time on the air, and how it was described and marketed during that time. 

This is immensely valuable because it can help you make future decisions for this media based on its history. You can use this data behind the scenes to market content more effectively, or promote it to audiences by showing off its past performance. 

Managing the ever-increasing amount of metadata

As mentioned, the above types of entertainment metadata are far from comprehensive. There are several more groups of media metadata you can use — we simply don’t have time to cover them in this blog post.

What’s more, as the streaming of content online booms, we’re going to see the existing pool of metadata increase exponentially. There’s already a challenging amount of metadata for many businesses to manage, maintain and distribute to partners and platforms. 

In just a few short years, that data pool is going to grow to a mind-boggling quantity. How can we keep on top of it?

Managing metadata in entertainment with MetaBroadcast

MetaBroadcast helps broadcasters and media platform professionals to organise, normalise, aggregate, enrich and deliver their required metadata sets, whatever the specific needs happen to be.

Our goal is to help you navigate the world of entertainment metadata with automated confidence. We aim to make everything as simple, effective, and empowering as possible. 

Please reach out today to discuss any metadata challenges with us that you or your team are facing.