Now - an aside - Musicbrainz was set up because of Gracenote. If I
understand correctly, the dataset that Gracenote CDDB is based on was
orginally an 'open' database with information contributed by the public.
It was sold, and changed its licensing structures away from the original
open source model.
FreeDB was then set up, but the data isn't controlled enough, and it's
full of rubbish, dupes etc. Musicbrainz puts more control and structure
around the data, and was initially a 'cleansing' effort around FreeDb
data.
________________________________
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard P Edwards
Sent: 26 January 2007 01:27
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the
BBC
James,
The 128 character description could well be the ISRC code from
the original label.
If it is, then it contains a lot of those same details, and is
unique across all manufactured CD's.
I would also be surprised if you haven't come across these
guys....
http://www.gracenote.com/prof_home.html
They seem to have the Song ID database sown up.
RichE
On 25 Jan 2007, at 16:55, James Cridland wrote:
Michael,
Ignoring for a while the question of why the BBC is now
looking at putting third-party music information services out of
business, and being constructive:
The major problem we've found working with any
third-party music data is the issue of non-standard descriptions. Take a
well-known song, which is in our system as... "The Beatles: Norwegian
Wood (This bird has flown)", aka "Beatles, The: Norwegian Wood", for
example. Life gets harder with R.E.M.'s "End of the world as we know it
(and I feel fine)", since R.E.M. is also known as REM and R. E. M.
and... ooh, it's horrid. This needs fixing.
Secondly, working with third-party systems is a little
difficult for cleared-for-broadcast stuff. Oasis's "Fsucking in the
bushes" won't look great on scrolling DLS, however we do it - and
automated swear filters don't work cleverly enough. (I've added an extra
letter in there for work-safe email).
The way we've ended up working with these types of
services is to have to pre-moderate everything before importing, which
is a nuisance but the only way. Easy for us, given the comparatively
small amount of music we play; harder for the Beeb, I'd guess.
If it helps (which I doubt it will), if you go to
http://nowplaying.virginradio.co.uk/vr.js - do it in Firefox so you can
see it on-screen - you'll see the following information within a
JavaScript line:
Artist name ~ artist ID ~ Track name ~ track ID ~ Live
on-air studio ~ Presenter name ~ Presenter image reference ~ short
description of show (which makes no sense right now I notice!) ~ Short
legacy web action description ~ Webcam true/false flag ~ DJ show link ~
Official artist website ~ tickets available true/false ~ 128 character
description ~ some number which probably does something
I appreciate this is nothing to do with what you're
asking, but I wondered whether it was interesting to the conversation.
And I'm always up for a pint.
j
--
http://james.cridland.net/
http://www.virginradio.co.uk/vip/profile/bigjim/
