What is Golden Record Certification?
TrackForge is a music metadata management platform built for royalty collection and rights management. It ingests catalogue data, enriches it against multiple authoritative sources, resolves conflicts, and produces verified metadata records ready for commercial use.
Golden Record Certification is the process by which TrackForge cryptographically certifies that a metadata record has been through this full verification pipeline and met all quality thresholds. Each certified record is anchored to a public blockchain, creating an independently verifiable, tamper-proof attestation of the metadata's state at a specific point in time.1
The certification process
- Catalogue Upload — Raw metadata is ingested from the catalogue owner's files.
- Multi-Source Enrichment — Each track passes through a waterfall of authoritative sources: Spotify, MusicBrainz, Discogs, Last.fm, PRS for Music, MLC, and additional PROs.
- Cross-Source Validation — Where sources disagree, conflicts are detected, scored by confidence, and resolved algorithmically or flagged for human review.
- Tier Classification — Each track is evaluated against the tier criteria (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Declared) and assigned the highest tier it qualifies for.
- Canonicalisation — Rights-determinative fields are extracted and serialised into a deterministic canonical JSON form.
- SHA-256 Hashing — The canonical JSON is hashed, producing a unique fingerprint of the metadata state.
- Merkle Tree Construction — All track hashes in a certification batch are assembled into a binary Merkle tree, producing a single root hash.
- Blockchain Anchor — The Merkle root is anchored to a public blockchain via OpenTimestamps, creating a permanent, tamper-proof timestamp.
- Certificate Issued — The catalogue owner receives a certificate bundle containing the certification details, Merkle proofs, and verification instructions.
Business outcomes
Golden Record Certification is used when metadata certainty affects revenue, valuation, or legal exposure. It helps:
- Reduce royalty leakage by resolving conflicts before distribution.
- Shorten dispute resolution with an auditable evidence trail.
- Improve catalogue valuation and M&A diligence by providing verifiable metadata states.
- Speed up licensing and partner onboarding with a trusted record.
Who uses it (and when)
Common buyers and users include catalogue owners preparing a sale or audit, rights managers and publishers managing disputes, legal teams needing defensible time-stamped evidence, and partners evaluating metadata quality.
Typical triggers are acquisition due diligence, sync licensing clearance, recurring royalty audits, or high-value disputes.
Proof points (single-catalogue snapshot)
From a February 2026 catalogue assessment (309 recordings):
- 92% ISWC coverage (up from 76% pre-enrichment).
- 0.931 average metadata confidence score across all tracks.
- Oracle rating distribution: 156 Golden / 47 Validated / 106 Operational / 0 Minimal.
- Overall grade: AA (87.9/100).
- 1,114 automated investigations raised and 100% resolved (zero open cases).
- Writer IPI resolution: 91% resolved from PRO scraper cross-referencing alone.
These are readiness metrics from a single catalogue, not global averages. Use them as a baseline for similar size and quality profiles.
Case study (anonymized)
Engagement: Independent label catalogue preparing for acquisition due diligence. Scope: 309 recordings across a mixed-era back catalogue (1980s–2020s). Outcome: TrackForge ingested the catalogue, ran the full enrichment waterfall (Spotify, MusicBrainz, Discogs, Last.fm, PRS, PPL, SoundExchange), and produced a certification package graded AA. ISWC coverage rose from 76% to 92%, average confidence reached 0.931, and all 1,114 automated investigations were resolved — including 37 ISRC equivalence mappings across reissue campaigns. The buyer received a clear breakdown of 156 Golden-tier tracks (fully verified, litigation-ready) versus 106 Operational-tier tracks with documented gaps, enabling targeted remediation rather than a full re-audit.
Certification tiers
TrackForge classifies every certified track into one of four tiers based on verification depth:
| Tier | What it means |
|---|---|
| Gold | Fully verified: ISRC + ISWC + duration + writers with IPIs and shares + multi-source corroboration + human review |
| Silver | Structurally complete: ISRC + ISWC + duration + writer with IPI. Automated verification, no human review required |
| Bronze | Partially enriched: ISRC + duration + at least one of ISWC or writer name. Gaps are documented transparently |
| Declared | User-submitted metadata, cryptographically timestamped but not independently verified by TrackForge |
These four tiers group TrackForge's underlying six-level metadata completeness model for commercial simplicity. The full model also includes an assurance axis (how trustworthy the data is, from self-certified through litigation-grade) and a collection confidence assessment (whether royalties are actually flowing). See the Rating Methodology for the complete three-layer rating architecture.
The tier assigned to a track reflects how thoroughly it has been independently verified. Tracks that do not meet even the minimum requirements (no valid ISRC) are routed to an investigation queue for manual resolution or additional enrichment.
Commercially, tiers are often used as readiness signals: Gold for the highest-stakes uses (acquisition, litigation), Silver for licensing and distribution, Bronze for internal QA and remediation, and Declared for initial intake.
For detailed tier definitions and the decision process, see Certification Tiers.
What you receive
- Catalogue certification summary report.
- Per-track certificates with canonical JSON, hash, and tier.
- Merkle proofs and blockchain anchor references.
- Proof bundle for independent, offline verification.
- Methodology snapshot applied at the time of certification.
Next step: request a certification review
If you need a defensible, time-stamped metadata record for a transaction, audit, or dispute, we can provide a readiness assessment and certification plan tailored to your catalogue.
Contact TrackForge
What does certification prove?
TrackForge certification is best understood through analogy. Consider title insurance in property transactions: a title insurer does not guarantee that no competing claim to the property exists anywhere in the world. Instead, they attest that a thorough, documented search was conducted and no issues were found.
TrackForge certification works the same way:
"We searched thoroughly using a documented process and found no issues" — not "there are definitively no issues."
The certification attests to the rigour of the verification process, not to absolute legal truth. It confirms that the metadata was enriched against multiple authoritative sources, that conflicts were detected and resolved, that quality gates were passed, and that — for B2B engagements — a human operator reviewed and approved the result.
The certification pipeline
The end-to-end process transforms raw catalogue data into a blockchain-anchored certification. Every step is documented, versioned, and reproducible.
- Catalogue Upload — Raw metadata is ingested from the catalogue owner's files.
- Multi-Source Enrichment — Each track passes through a waterfall of authoritative sources: Spotify, MusicBrainz, Discogs, Last.fm, PRS for Music, MLC, and additional PROs.
- Cross-Source Validation — Where sources disagree, conflicts are detected, scored by confidence, and resolved algorithmically or flagged for human review.
- Tier Classification — Each track is evaluated against the tier criteria (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Declared) and assigned the highest tier it qualifies for.
- Canonicalisation — Rights-determinative fields are extracted and serialised into a deterministic canonical JSON form.
- SHA-256 Hashing — The canonical JSON is hashed, producing a unique fingerprint of the metadata state.
- Merkle Tree Construction — All track hashes in a certification batch are assembled into a binary Merkle tree, producing a single root hash.
- Blockchain Anchor — The Merkle root is anchored to a public blockchain via OpenTimestamps, creating a permanent, tamper-proof timestamp.
- Certificate Issued — The catalogue owner receives a certificate bundle containing the certification details, Merkle proofs, and verification instructions.
What's next
- What Certification Does and Does Not Mean — The precise boundaries of what a TrackForge certification asserts, and what it does not.
- Methodology — The full technical methodology, from enrichment through blockchain anchoring.