Do you use RIN files?

In these days of self-published music, many artists release music without giving full credit to everyone involved in the production. And often this is simply because they don’t even know everyone who was involved, or because it’s a lot of work keeping this information updated during the long production process. These problems can be alleviated somewhat with the use of RIN files.

Recording Information Notification, or RIN files, are XML files contining details of all contributors to a published work. The standard is proposed by a consortium of record companies , music rights societies and digital service providers known as Digital Data Exchange, or DDEX, and is already being used by many studios, artists, and others involved in music production.

With a RIN file, each contributor simply adds the information about their contribution to the RIN file, and sends it along with the content (audio files etc) to the next person in the chain, allowing them to add theirs and pass it on. When the production is complete, the final RIN file will have all the information required for publication.

To this end, Soundways have released a DAW plugin called RIN-M that allows you to easily add the contributor information to your RIN file at each step. This is a huge time-saver for artists who would rather be creating content than spend lots of time adding contributor info. And best of all, it’s FREE! I would encourage all artists to install this plugin and use it. Even if your RIN file is not used on your release, you’ll still have all that valuable information available in future, so you can tell your grandchildren with 100% certainty – “Yes, I helped make that!”