spintheblackestcircles.org

I have a question for those of you who have worked at least tangentially in the music industry, whether it's running a label, working at a distributor, or working in a record store. When release information is sent from the label to distributors to stores, how is this metadata sent? Is there a standard for the electronic transfer of metadata in the music industry, or is it a series of Excel spreadsheets and poorly formatted printouts?

I work in the publishing industry, and there are standards, such as ONIX 2.1 and ONIX 3, for how metadata is organized. I'm wondering if there is something similar for the music industry.