Artist crediting order: cover vs metadata?

Every now and then I get really on my head about which order I should follow when there are two or more artists credited on a release.

For example, would you enter this release as “Romero Ferro, Danny Bond & DJ Zullu” exactly like it is on Apple Music (and other platforms) or as “DJ Zullu, Danny Bond & Romero Ferro” like it is on the cover?

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I follow the cover, not a shop.

If I know more about the release I’ll also consider who is “leading” the project.

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I usually follow the cover order. I assume that the person who designed the image put more thought and effort into it than the person who typed the names into a text field (although in this case, maybe they just went with that order to match the photo…). :thinking:

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it depends on the shop for me. if it’s something like a small artist on their personal Bandcamp where i’m pretty confident the artist typed out the artist credit themself, i’ll go with that & assume they just thought the different credits looked prettier on the cover.

but i’m a little more inclined to go with the cover if it was just released to a store with their own guidelines & ways of doing things like Apple Music.

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It does seem like Romero Ferro is the lead since the song is copyrighted to him

how about this one?

looking at the cover it should be “Ex:Re” and “12 Ensemble”. digital platforms however also credit “Josephine Stephenson” as an additional main artist while “Apple Music” excludes “12 Ensemble”.

is there some guideline? right now I would go by what the cover states.

Probably just “Ex:Re with 12 Ensemble” for both title and artist. Ex:Re with 12 Ensemble – Projects / Collaborations – Josephine Stephenson suggests Josephine was the arranger and she should be credited as such.

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