Metadata goodies
Music 07/21/2004 |Not useable metadata goodies, unfortunately, but still, this is good to hear. Apparently, Gracenote — maintainers of the CDDB (which iTunes and many other audio players use to provide track information upon insertion of a CD) have many additional possible data fields that can be used, according to this comment sent to Macintouch (emphasis mine):
Classical music is a difficult problem for almost all digital media players. The rock & pop music world is much different than the Classical world - the data fields are not sufficient for describing Classical music. The Gracenote database has support for Composer, Ensemble, Orchestra, Conductor, and many other fields, but many applications choose not to support these fields. So over the years, the fields have been overloaded in meaning and in data. We recently re-wrote our Classical music standards so that existing applications can begin to be more consistent. But more importantly, Gracenote’s next generation database will fully support Classical music metadata like no other database. We are working to spread these changes out to our application developers, including Apple. Our editorial team is working hard to standardize the existing Classical data as well, partnering with experts in the industry. Look for big changes in 2004 and 2005.
Hopefully these extra fields trickle down to iTunes in a (near) future release!
iTunes: “1st Premonition (DBX)” by Giannelli, Fred from the album Sound of Superstition, The Vol. 5 (1997, 6:08).
[See also: Metadata is a good thing | iTMS Exclusive: LXG Soundtrack | Announcing the…iHPod? | 13 Free Songs from iTunes | iTunes and Jazz: More about Metadata ]
2 Responses to “Metadata goodies”
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jer@nyquil.org
Bryan
Michael Hanscom
Prairie
July 21st, 2004 at 7:10 pm
The NY Times said that iTunes is a really great value if you need to build a classical collection. The pricing differs for the classical catalog. It’d be nice to get Wagner’s Ring Cycle for 99 cents but that ain’t gonna happen.
OK everybody sing - KILL DA WABBIT! KILL DA WABBIT!
July 15th, 2005 at 9:46 am
Great bugs bunny reference…
So there is a product that solves the classical music metadata problem. Alright, I’m not going to lie, I work for the company that makes it, and helped develop it. It’s called Maestro and all the music is classified by, and easily searched through by composer, conductor, ensemble, venue, performer, and much more. The best part is that all the data is consistent, meaning that you don’t have to deal with misspellings or composers being classified under multiple names like “Beethoven, Ludwig Van” vs. “Ludwig van Beethoven”
The music can be looked at and played in three different ways; the CDs, the works or the tracks, which isn’t supported by the tags of current MP3s or other music formats.
We’ve also got all the CD artwork, including cover art and liner notes and the music you hear from our player is exactly the same as what you hear from the CD, so it sounds good, unlike most compressed classical MP3s.
Check us out… http://www.fortunclassical.com