Syncing is at the core of what Supertape does. As an artist, you've already done the work to get your music, merch, videos, and tour dates on to the necessary platforms, and instead of making you list those items again on your website, Supertape automatically finds them and brings them all together for you.
To help you understand how syncing works, we're going to use a couple general terms:
- Item - means any album, product, video, or event on a platform or in your inventory.
- Metadata - means the information about an item, like name, description, or image.
How syncing works
Once you link a platform, we'll do a sync right away to import everything from that platform. For each item we find, we'll check to see if it already exists in your inventory, or if we need to create it.
After that, we'll continue to do a daily sync of your linked platform, to pull in any new items you release, and remove ones that no longer exist. We'll send you an email notification any time we find something new, so that you're aware that it got added to your website, and can go in and make any changes to it if necessary.
How item metadata is set
Each platform provides different metadata about your items. For example, some music platforms will provide us with a description of an album, and others won't. On top of that, the same item may have different metadata on different platforms. So how do we decide what to use?
We use a first-come-first-served approach. When an item is found on one of your platforms that doesn't yet exist in your inventory, we'll create it with whatever metadata that platform has for it. If there's still some missing metadata, like a description, then we'll set that when that same item is found on a different platform that has it.
Additionally, some metadata, like album type, product type, video type, etc. is set by Supertape directly. For example, different music platforms have different criteria for determining album type (EP, Single, Compilation, etc.), so we've adopted our own. We always make our best guess at what type of item it is, given the metadata we have for it.
Fixing item metadata
We do our absolute best to intelligently find and set the best metadata for everything in your inventory. Unfortunately, sometimes the metadata that gets set on an item won't be what you want, or may be wrong entirely. In those cases, you can edit the item in your inventory, and whatever new values you set (or images you upload) will be used.
One thing to keep in mind is that the metadata we found was likely pulled directly from one of your linked platforms, so if something is wrong in Supertape, it's likely wrong on that platform too, and you should fix both. We have details on how to make changes to a given platform in our Platforms area.
It's also worth remembering that once an item is imported and all of its metadata is set, we won't continue to update that item if its metadata on a platform is updated. We do this because you may have customized an item already on Supertape, and because different platforms could still have conflicting metadata.
How items are matched across platforms
When items are synced and imported into your inventory, we'll first try to match it to an existing item we've already found on a different platform. Depending on the type of item it is (album, product, etc.) we'll use different criteria to determine a match.
The most accurate way to ensure a match is if the item has what we call an "Industry ID". For albums and products, this is a UPC, and for songs and videos this is an ISRC. This is why it's so important to make sure these attributes are set properly on all of your platforms.
If an item doesn't have an "Industry ID" set, we'll do our best to match it to existing items in your inventory by how similar its name, release date, and other metadata are.
Fixing mismatched items
If you notice that a platform link was matched to the wrong item in your inventory, this means it doesn't have an "Industry ID" (ie UPC or ISRC), so first make sure that is added to the platform if possible.
After that, you can go into the item in your Supertape inventory, select the platform link in question, then edit that link and change the album / product / video to the correct one.
Changing what gets synced
Some platforms can sync multiple types of items. For example, Bandcamp can sync albums, products, and videos. If you'd only like some of those to get synced, you can edit your platform link and uncheck the items you don't want. If you uncheck all of them, only a link to your profile on that platform will remain.