Did you know that depending on the language used, album titles, and track titles actually need to be “cased” a certain way (as in, “upper case” vs “lower case” letters)? It can be tricky to navigate, but with the following info you should be all set to case like a pro!
Pro tip: We cannot submit a release with album or track titles in ALL CAPS due to industry standards and guidelines. Artist names, however, are a totally separate (check out our Artist Names and Casing article) approval process based on established naming practices.
LANGUAGE CASING
English Title Casing
English albums and track titles must be in title case format. Title case format requires the first letter of each word be capitalized, with some exceptions for smaller connecting words.
The following words must be in lower case:
- a, an, and, as, but, for, from, nor, of, or, so, the, to, and yet.
The following words must be in lower case, with a few exceptions:
- Prepositions of four letters or fewer (at, by, for, from, in, into, of, off, on, onto, out, over, to, up, and with), except when the word is part of a verb phrase or is used as another part of speech (such as an adverb, adjective, noun, or verb).
In addition, for English, words before and after a -, /, or : must be capitalized.
The most common example of a preposition being cased differently is "From", which is used to describe the source material for covers of songs from TV / Film / Game Soundtracks. Since it is used to tell where the song came from (and isn't a part of the song's name), it gets to be capitalized.
EXAMPLES:
"From"
- Tank! (From "Cowboy Bebop")
Spanish and Portuguese Casing
The following Spanish words should always be in lowercase (except for when used as the first word of the title):
| a | e | las | por |
| al | el | los | un |
| de | en | o | una |
| del | la | para | y |
The following Portuguese words should always be in lowercase (except for when used as the first word of the title):
| a | das | nas | pela |
| à | de | no | pelas |
| ao | do | nos | pelo |
| aos | dos | o | pelos |
| as | e | os | por |
| às | em | ou | um |
| da | na | para | uma |
Swedish, French and Italian
For titles in Swedish, French, and Italian, sentence casing must be used where only the first letter of the first word is capitalized; the remaining words except proper nouns must be in all lower case. Proper nouns are the names of particular people, places, or things. The first letter of proper nouns must be capitalized:
EXAMPLES:
L’amour dans la rue
Il mondo che vorrei
För sent för edelweiss
German
For titles in German, sentence casing must be used, and the first letter of every noun must be capitalized.
For example Dies ist der Albumtitel
Non-Standard Characters:
Unfortunately, Soundrop cannot distribute non-standard keyboard characters to partners in metadata. Please do not enter characters like emojis 😊, ˢᵘᵖᵉʳˢᶜʳᶦᵖᵗ or subscript or other specialized fonts.
Do you need to request approval for creative casing of your artist name? Click here for eligibility and instructions.