For salaried staff, credits are a nice-to-have. For freelancers, credits are the portfolio. Someone deciding whether to hire an engineer often has nothing to go on except what that engineer has verifiably worked on.
What a full credit list contains
**Music**
- Performers, instrument by instrument
- Songwriters and composers, with splits where relevant
- Producer, and co-producers
- Recording engineer, and assistant
- Mix engineer
- Mastering engineer
- Studios used, by name, for each stage
- Artwork, photography and video
**Podcast and spoken word**
- Host and co-hosts
- Guests, with their correct titles
- Producer
- Editor
- Sound designer or composer for music used
- Studio or recording location
**Video**
- Director, producer, camera, sound recordist
- Editor, colourist, sound mix
- Locations and crew
Get the details right
Use the name the person works under, spelled the way they spell it. Ask rather than guess — plenty of people credit differently from their legal name. Name the specific role: "mixed by" and "recorded by" are different jobs and conflating them takes credit from one person and gives it to another.
Where a project had several stages in different rooms, credit each room for the work it did. A studio that tracked drums should not disappear because a different studio handled vocals.
Where credits belong
Metadata in the delivered files. The release page or episode description. The project page on your own site. Anywhere someone might check before hiring. Buried credits do the same work as no credits.
Agree credits before the session
Put the credit line in the same message as the rate. "Fee is X, credited as mix engineer" removes the awkward conversation entirely. If a client cannot credit the work for legitimate reasons — ghost production, white-label content, confidential corporate work — that is a normal arrangement, but price it accordingly, because uncredited work builds nothing.
For the people being credited
Keep your own record of every project: date, role, client, and a link if it is public. Reconstructing three years of freelance history from memory is miserable, and a maintained list is what turns a conversation into a booking.