How would you cite a song in Harvard style?

Here's the scenario:

You have found a song - an honest-to-goodness recording of a musical number - on iTunes or some other music platform, and you want to use that song in a presentation.  How do you cite it using Harvard*?

You should be able to find the details for the album the recording originally came from by looking at song in iTunes.  You might then need to look the album up somewhere else to get all of the details you need (Wikipedia is usually a good resource for things like this). 

For Harvard you would need:

• the name of the recording artist(s), 
• the year the album was produced, 
• the title of the song
• the title of the album, 
• the type of recording/format (CD, iTunes, etc), and 
• the publisher (in this case, the record label).  

Some times you have a song that was originally released on one album, but then included in a "best of" type album or a later compilation.  There's actually more than one "mix" of some songs, so the album is important - this is why you use the date the album was release, rather than the date the song was originally released.

So, take the Rolling Stone's song, "(I Can't Get No)Satisfaction". The copy of this song I found on iTunes wasn't the original release, it was a stereo remix on a later composition album.

This song would end up looking like this:

Rolling Stones 1971, '(I can't get no) satisfaction', Hot rocks 1964-1971, iTunes, ABKCO Records.

If the song was originally released on iTunes, and does not come from an album, then you would treat the song itself as if it were an album:

de Forest, E 2014, Rainmaker (Sidelmann remix), iTunes, Universal Music.

It's the same for Spotify, only you'd replace "iTunes" with "Spotify" in your reference.

*Remember, Harvard isn't a standardised style, and different institutions might be using different versions of Harvard.  This advice is based on the Harvard style used at JCU, which has been adapted from the Australian Government's Style manual for authors, editors and printers, 6th edition. You may have to adapt this format to match the style preferred by your lecturer.