Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-02-19 Thread James Cridland

This might be interesting and/or relevant to this discussion...


-Original Message-

From: Daniel Harris [*mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]]

Sent: 17 February 2007 19:11

To: IWA-Europe/UK-Webcasting

Cc: Philip Haggar; James Cridland; Alex Wolfe

Subject: Re: [iwa-europe] Content description, search and discovery:
cross-media metadata standards...

Hi James,

As the IWA are officially backing the Summit (see their recent
newsletter)...

Those BBC Backstage guys should definitely come along to the Cross-Media
Metadata Summit.

Please could you let your network know too. It's sure to be a very
interesting event...

CROSS-MEDIA SUMMIT for CONTENT DISCOVERY The Strategy, Technology and
Business Case for Content Description, Visibility, Search and Discovery
Friday 9th March 2007, Frontline Club, London, UK Gathering creators, rights
holders and technology experts Moderated by Bob Auger, Technology
Correspondent, Cue Entertainment Sponsored by Kendra Initiative and Makeni

This Summit will bring together business strategy and technical know-how
from all media industry sectors to work through the issues, innovate and
answer the question:

THE UNIVERSAL CATALOGUE - IS THERE THE WILL TO BUILD IT?

How do content owners increase the visibility and discovery of their
content? Do we need more metadata standards for cross-media description?
What's wrong with ones we already have? Does more effort need to be made to
implement those that already exist? Should standards groups build more
end-user tools? What are the drivers for industry adoption? Can we make the
tools simpler and easier to use? What are the requirements of end-users in
the media industry?

Tools enabling metadata aggregation, searching and publishing could be
vastly improved. The lack of support and interoperability is having a
profound impact on the ability of all media industry sectors to monetise
their products.

Bringing together key cross-industry strategists and technologists from
standards, search, image, music and film companies shaping the digital media
marketplace. Aiming to share experiences, discover synergy and innovate.
Identifying areas for further investigation to drive adoption of metadata
syndication ecosystems that enable content owners to increase visibility of
their content.

The day will feature short, sharp business strategy and technology briefings
from many experts. Participants will benefit from the experiences of their
counterparts in other arts and media sectors.

Participants include CEO of ISAN, Head of RD at MCPS-PRS Alliance,
Principal Engineer for Pioneer Digital Design and Microsoft's DDEX board
member.

See: *http://www.kendra.org.uk* http://www.kendra.org.uk/

Kendra Initiative is a media and technology, academic and industry alliance
of over 500 participants in 40 plus countries. The mission is to foster an
open distributed marketplace for digital media (including films, music,
images, games and text). The initiative researches, recommends and develops
enhancements to the digital media marketplace that will facilitate
interoperability and revenue generation for content owners and service
providers. The cross-industry group is currently investigating content
description, delivery, visibility, search and discovery.


RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-30 Thread Michael Smethurst
same artist ~ different network ~ different artist id
that is indeed one problem we have to surmount



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of James Cridland
Sent: 27 January 2007 23:27
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC


On 1/26/07, Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 

Can i ask what ur artist id and track id are: 
var gimpdata=Steve Miller Band~391~The Joker~E148~A~Russ
Williams~williams~the music we all love~Contact
Russ~False~http://www.virginradio.co.uk/russ/~~False~Steve Miller\'s
godfather is Les Paul, pioneer of the electric guitar.~1615 ;

Are these internal Vigin ids or do they tie into some other id
schema?


Internal Virgin IDs. 391 is the ID for the Steve Miller Band; E148 is
actually the audio filename on the playout system (those IDs can also be
around 15 characters, which means this track is coming off CD). 

Importantly, these are network-wide (so '391' is Steve Miller Band
whether we play it on Virgin Radio, Virgin Radio Classic Rock, Virgin
Radio Xtreme, etc.) - which is, what I suspect, you're thinking of
sorting for the Beeb. 


-- 
http://james.cridland.net/ 


RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-30 Thread Michael Smethurst
snip
It shouldn't be forgotten that we (and the BBC) regularly don't play CDs
at all, using playout systems, minidiscs (eurgh), or other more esoteric
things from multiple studios. 
/snip
 
and again the problems of live performance...



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of James Cridland
Sent: 27 January 2007 23:26
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC


On 1/26/07, Richard P Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 

The 128 character description could well be the ISRC code from
the original label.


It's not: it's in English, and is a description for the current artist.
It goes onto DABtext and our player. The final number is, I suspect,
actually a proper 'track ID' rather than the 'media ID' which I called a
track ID earlier; but I'd not worry about it... 



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.


Problem with services like that is what happens when we play a CD that
- isn't manufactured (i.e. is a CD-R that we've made) 
- isn't available in the shops (i.e. is a promo copy for radio only)
- has the wrong information or badly typed info

It shouldn't be forgotten that we (and the BBC) regularly don't play CDs
at all, using playout systems, minidiscs (eurgh), or other more esoteric
things from multiple studios. 


-- 
http://james.cridland.net/ 


RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-30 Thread Michael Smethurst
snipThey should never be the exact same audio object with different
[isrc] codes./snip
I'm just not sure this happens in practice. According to our production
staff ISRC codes are not as reliable as intended
 
Don't think i was too clear on the description of the live stuff
What we wanna do is provide set lists eg glastonbury
The band may play some songs off singles, some off albums and maybe a
cover or two
These songs can't be mapped to tracks on releases cos they're not
the same audio object. So we need to model a concept of song as an
abstract entity that may have multiple renditions as tracks
At the mo no music data providers model the song; only tracks
This is one of the changes we're considering asking brainz for
 
Any more suggestions?
 



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard P Edwards
Sent: 26 January 2007 15:30
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC


Hi Michael, 

The label's prefix is always in the ISRC code this may explain
further...
http://www.riaa.com/issues/audio/isrc_faq.asp
My understanding is that the code is attached to the original and unique
recording. so many recordings of the same song can have different
codes... but each is unique in its sound after mastering.
They should never be the exact same audio object with different codes.
That does make sense to me, as it is the recording that is important in
this case, not the lyrical content or title.
Obviously this is designed for admin and royalty collection and
therefore the code would probably always be considered along with the CD
label. which incorporates the other descriptions one normally
requires.
It can quickly become very complicated if you want to include Genre of
music as a description, as you can see from the changing playlists of
radio 1/2 etc. 
If it is just for live music, then most listeners will be able to
discern what they are looking at or listening to from the Venue details
along with the Artist name.
So I would look toward the following
Name, (Song Title)
Artist,
Venue
Date
Album
Composer
Genre
Comments

Obviously there will be other BBC type info that is needed, but these
fields should be enough for a complete description, if I follow your
idea.
ATB
RichE


On 26 Jan 2007, at 13:21, Michael Smethurst wrote:


On the subject of ISRC codes I've spoken to some of the
production people about this
Apparently they're supposed to uniquely identify the audio
object
So if a track appears on a single and also appears on an album
with EXACTLY the same recording it should have the same isrc code
BUT
apparently labels often prefix the isrc with something to
identify the label
so if a release is re-released on a different label the tracks
on it often have different ISRC codes even tho they're the same audio
object
Basically they're not guranteed
Anyway, this is what i've been told... i'd be delighted to be
told different...
[and they're also no good for describing live music]
 
We have come across gracenotes but unfortunately (once again)
they don't really model the platonic ideal of a song (just tracks)
so mike flowers pops wonderwall

http://www.gracenote.com/prof/music/album.html/ambdreampop/7fc4bbab6b367
527a59404978be5b833.html
has no song to tie it back to oasis's wonderwall

http://www.gracenote.com/prof/music/album.html/britpop/6ffbeca624a0d776e
294e04ece5219d9.html
they just happen to label the track search as song
maybe there's more going on under the skin of the site but i
doubt it



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

Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-30 Thread Nic James Ferrier
Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 snipThey should never be the exact same audio object with different
 [isrc] codes./snip
 I'm just not sure this happens in practice. According to our production
 staff ISRC codes are not as reliable as intended
  
 Don't think i was too clear on the description of the live stuff
 What we wanna do is provide set lists eg glastonbury
 The band may play some songs off singles, some off albums and maybe a
 cover or two
 These songs can't be mapped to tracks on releases cos they're not
 the same audio object. So we need to model a concept of song as an
 abstract entity that may have multiple renditions as tracks
 At the mo no music data providers model the song; only tracks
 This is one of the changes we're considering asking brainz for
  
 Any more suggestions?

You could have songs, performances (renditions?) and tracks.

You *might* have multiple tracks from a single performance. Consider
all those deadheads with their 8 tracks of the same happening.

An orchestra might choose to release multiple tracks of the same
performance for remixing purposes.

-- 
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk   for all your tapsell ferrier needs
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Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-30 Thread Richard Lockwood

For an extensive example of indexing of an artist's different
recordings, releases, mixes etc, take a look at the Hawkwind Codex -
all released Hawkwind tracks, in all different versions, and which
albums/singles each different version was on.

http://www.starfarer.net/hwcodex.html

Cheers,

R.

On 1/30/07, Nic James Ferrier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 snipThey should never be the exact same audio object with different
 [isrc] codes./snip
 I'm just not sure this happens in practice. According to our production
 staff ISRC codes are not as reliable as intended

 Don't think i was too clear on the description of the live stuff
 What we wanna do is provide set lists eg glastonbury
 The band may play some songs off singles, some off albums and maybe a
 cover or two
 These songs can't be mapped to tracks on releases cos they're not
 the same audio object. So we need to model a concept of song as an
 abstract entity that may have multiple renditions as tracks
 At the mo no music data providers model the song; only tracks
 This is one of the changes we're considering asking brainz for

 Any more suggestions?

You could have songs, performances (renditions?) and tracks.

You *might* have multiple tracks from a single performance. Consider
all those deadheads with their 8 tracks of the same happening.

An orchestra might choose to release multiple tracks of the same
performance for remixing purposes.

--
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk   for all your tapsell ferrier needs
-
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RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-30 Thread Michael Smethurst
Bless you
That is cool
;) 

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard Lockwood
Sent: 30 January 2007 18:33
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

For an extensive example of indexing of an artist's different
recordings, releases, mixes etc, take a look at the Hawkwind Codex - all
released Hawkwind tracks, in all different versions, and which
albums/singles each different version was on.

http://www.starfarer.net/hwcodex.html

Cheers,

R.

On 1/30/07, Nic James Ferrier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  snipThey should never be the exact same audio object with 
  different [isrc] codes./snip I'm just not sure this happens in 
  practice. According to our production staff ISRC codes are not as 
  reliable as intended
 
  Don't think i was too clear on the description of the live stuff 
  What we wanna do is provide set lists eg glastonbury The band may 
  play some songs off singles, some off albums and maybe a cover or 
  two These songs can't be mapped to tracks on releases cos 
  they're not the same audio object. So we need to model a concept of 
  song as an abstract entity that may have multiple renditions as 
  tracks At the mo no music data providers model the song; only tracks

  This is one of the changes we're considering asking brainz for
 
  Any more suggestions?

 You could have songs, performances (renditions?) and tracks.

 You *might* have multiple tracks from a single performance. Consider 
 all those deadheads with their 8 tracks of the same happening.

 An orchestra might choose to release multiple tracks of the same 
 performance for remixing purposes.

 --
 Nic Ferrier
 http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk   for all your tapsell ferrier needs
 -
 Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group.  To unsubscribe, 
 please visit 
 http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html.  
 Unofficial list archive: 
 http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/

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Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-29 Thread Gordon Joly



 All tru
 Brainz has advanced relationships to break Paul Simon and Art
 Garfunkel into paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (bad example I know)
 And for that matter Peter Andre and Jordan into Peter Andre and
 Jordan

  [http://tinyurl.com/2yxx76]




This link is to Amazon.co.uk which reminded me

I was told that all authors have a unique id, so that all the authors 
(called John Smith or Nitesh Patel etc) have unique identifier (like 
books have ISBN) and furthermore that Amazon ignore this identifier.



Gordo

--
Think Feynman/
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]///
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Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-27 Thread James Cridland

On 1/26/07, Richard P Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


The 128 character description could well be the ISRC code from the
original label.



It's not: it's in English, and is a description for the current artist. It
goes onto DABtext and our player. The final number is, I suspect, actually a
proper 'track ID' rather than the 'media ID' which I called a track ID
earlier; but I'd not worry about it...

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.



Problem with services like that is what happens when we play a CD that
- isn't manufactured (i.e. is a CD-R that we've made)
- isn't available in the shops (i.e. is a promo copy for radio only)
- has the wrong information or badly typed info

It shouldn't be forgotten that we (and the BBC) regularly don't play CDs at
all, using playout systems, minidiscs (eurgh), or other more esoteric things
from multiple studios.

--
http://james.cridland.net/


RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Kim Plowright
I've been lurking on the Musicbrainz dev list for years; iirc, there is
some hidden category to make duets/collaborations like that resolve to
two artists.

It may well be worth finding their list archives to check we're not
about to rediscuss all of the conversations!

(Is Rob Mayhem and Chaos on here now? Hello love, if so!)

k
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Wood
Sent: 24 January 2007 23:47
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

I bumped into a fully fledged spec for a music ontology the other day
[http://pingthesemanticweb.com/ontology/mo/], which looks like it hit
revision 1.0 in December. Seems it's sharing your position of wanting to
work with the musicbrainz model, but also wanting to extend it to make
it more applicable to other uses (namely linking up to other
resources)...

I've only recently started looking at the musicbrainz data, but the
first thing I noticed (as seems common to other models) is the sometimes
broken assumption that the artist name of a track should resolve to an
artist entry. E.g. 'The Pogues  Kirsty McCall' is an artist entry for
'Fairytale of New York'. Whereas It'd be way more useful to have two
artist entries point to the track, and put the 'artist title' somewhere
else. iTunes provides a compromise of making 'Artist' and 'Album artist'
available to differentiate this, but this still doesn't provide the many
to one relationship that would be more semantically correct, imho.

Although my thoughts generally tend to verge towards the 'finding new
music' angle, I'd most likely  be up for points 7  8 :-)

Cheers
Dave

PS First post n'all. And I should probably come out as a BBC employee
using non-work email 'all my own/not bbc thoughts' disclaimer applies,
etc.

On 1/24/07, Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Evening all

 BBC Audio and Music (ne Radio and Music) are about to embark on the 
 long and winding road to a better online music offering
 To this end we've been working with http://mayhem-chaos.net/blog/ of 
 http://musicbrainz.org/ to improve our music (meta)data

 So the questions to you are:
 1. Have you worked with musicbrainz data?
 2. If so what's missing from / wrong with the model (we've spotted 
 works, movements, songs as opposed to tracks, releases conflated with 
 products... maybe there's something you'd like to see in there).
 Responses from classical music geeks especially welcome!
 3. Have you worked with the musicbrainz api?
 4. If so what would you like to see there?
 5. Have you ever worked with any bbc music data (unlikely cos to the 
 best of my knowledge we've never given you any ~ sorry) 6. What music 
 related data would you like to see from the bbc?
 7. If you sat in a pub and sketched an ideal schema to describe music 
 what would it look like?
 8. Would you like to sit in a pub and sketch an ideal schema to 
 describe music? We might run to a pint...

 As a first stage we're working with Robert to expand his schema to 
 allow the modelling of classical music, live music, sessions etc 
 without alienating his community. If there's enough interest it might 
 be an excuse for a musicbrainz/backstage/bbc meetup later this year

 Sorry to be quite so open ended but if you've got an opinion on any of

 this (or anything in any way related) please scribble it here

 Cheers
 Michael

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RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Kim Plowright
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/ 




Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Brian Nixon
Dear
--- Richard P Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

May I ask you who do you think music is made for?

Who makes the music?

If it comes from inspiration then it belongs to us
all!

Thereby hides the sins of man, he takes that which he
does not make and uses to feather his own nest!

Have a nice day!

From a real person called brian Nixon aged 68 and
finds this web site un helpful, for no one seems to be
dealing with the Trusteeship of the Trustee's of an
Organisation that was set up and paid for by us the
licence fee payer and then we who own it are ignored
when policy is made, because like governments, they
are all ruled by the word Democracy but in fact is a
lie to us all.
A lie to us all is a crime called Perjury and
Perjury is itself a lie to ones self in the only fact
that life gives to us human beings and that is we are
alive and the only other state we know as a fact is
death.

So the beginning or the end of the arguments I have
seen daily on this web site for which I pay for. Is no
one cares at all about us all and that we live in that
new dictatorship of a pending Republican State that
Mr. Blair AGREED IN AN AGREEMENT HE AND NOW DEAD MO
MOLAM MADE ON OUR BEHALF WHETHER WE WANTED IT OR NOT!

READ FOR YOURSELF THE PROOF OF WHAT I CLAIM.

GO TO THE ULSTER UNIVERSITY WEB SITE AND ASK THEM TO
BRING THIS AGREEMENT UP FOR YOU TO READ!

THE ON THAT SAME SITE ASK THEM TO READ THE 1689
FREEDOM ACT AND COMPARE WHAT REALITY HAS GIVEN TO US
ALL!

HAVE A NICE DAY!




wrote:

 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/
 
 




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Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Richard Lockwood

The pubs are obviously open.

Cheers,

Rich.

On 1/26/07, Brian Nixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Dear
--- Richard P Edwards [EMAIL PROTECTED]

May I ask you who do you think music is made for?

Who makes the music?

If it comes from inspiration then it belongs to us
all!

Thereby hides the sins of man, he takes that which he
does not make and uses to feather his own nest!

Have a nice day!

From a real person called brian Nixon aged 68 and
finds this web site un helpful, for no one seems to be
dealing with the Trusteeship of the Trustee's of an
Organisation that was set up and paid for by us the
licence fee payer and then we who own it are ignored
when policy is made, because like governments, they
are all ruled by the word Democracy but in fact is a
lie to us all.
A lie to us all is a crime called Perjury and
Perjury is itself a lie to ones self in the only fact
that life gives to us human beings and that is we are
alive and the only other state we know as a fact is
death.

So the beginning or the end of the arguments I have
seen daily on this web site for which I pay for. Is no
one cares at all about us all and that we live in that
new dictatorship of a pending Republican State that
Mr. Blair AGREED IN AN AGREEMENT HE AND NOW DEAD MO
MOLAM MADE ON OUR BEHALF WHETHER WE WANTED IT OR NOT!

READ FOR YOURSELF THE PROOF OF WHAT I CLAIM.

GO TO THE ULSTER UNIVERSITY WEB SITE AND ASK THEM TO
BRING THIS AGREEMENT UP FOR YOU TO READ!

THE ON THAT SAME SITE ASK THEM TO READ THE 1689
FREEDOM ACT AND COMPARE WHAT REALITY HAS GIVEN TO US
ALL!

HAVE A NICE DAY!




wrote:

 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/






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Wall Street Journal
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RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Michael Smethurst
All tru
Brainz has advanced relationships to break Paul Simon and Art
Garfunkel into paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (bad example I know)
And for that matter Peter Andre and Jordan into Peter Andre and
Jordan
[http://tinyurl.com/2yxx76]


David
Thanks for the pointer to http://pingthesemanticweb.com/ontology/mo/.
Very interesting and definitely worth following up.
Still very focussed on commercially available stuff and lacking on the
Classical front tho ~ difficult to describe eg glastonbury or the proms
with this...?


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kim Plowright
Sent: 26 January 2007 10:46
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

I've been lurking on the Musicbrainz dev list for years; iirc, there is
some hidden category to make duets/collaborations like that resolve to
two artists.

It may well be worth finding their list archives to check we're not
about to rediscuss all of the conversations!

(Is Rob Mayhem and Chaos on here now? Hello love, if so!)

k
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Wood
Sent: 24 January 2007 23:47
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

I bumped into a fully fledged spec for a music ontology the other day
[http://pingthesemanticweb.com/ontology/mo/], which looks like it hit
revision 1.0 in December. Seems it's sharing your position of wanting to
work with the musicbrainz model, but also wanting to extend it to make
it more applicable to other uses (namely linking up to other
resources)...

I've only recently started looking at the musicbrainz data, but the
first thing I noticed (as seems common to other models) is the sometimes
broken assumption that the artist name of a track should resolve to an
artist entry. E.g. 'The Pogues  Kirsty McCall' is an artist entry for
'Fairytale of New York'. Whereas It'd be way more useful to have two
artist entries point to the track, and put the 'artist title' somewhere
else. iTunes provides a compromise of making 'Artist' and 'Album artist'
available to differentiate this, but this still doesn't provide the many
to one relationship that would be more semantically correct, imho.

Although my thoughts generally tend to verge towards the 'finding new
music' angle, I'd most likely  be up for points 7  8 :-)

Cheers
Dave

PS First post n'all. And I should probably come out as a BBC employee
using non-work email 'all my own/not bbc thoughts' disclaimer applies,
etc.

On 1/24/07, Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Evening all

 BBC Audio and Music (ne Radio and Music) are about to embark on the 
 long and winding road to a better online music offering
 To this end we've been working with http://mayhem-chaos.net/blog/ of 
 http://musicbrainz.org/ to improve our music (meta)data

 So the questions to you are:
 1. Have you worked with musicbrainz data?
 2. If so what's missing from / wrong with the model (we've spotted 
 works, movements, songs as opposed to tracks, releases conflated with 
 products... maybe there's something you'd like to see in there).
 Responses from classical music geeks especially welcome!
 3. Have you worked with the musicbrainz api?
 4. If so what would you like to see there?
 5. Have you ever worked with any bbc music data (unlikely cos to the 
 best of my knowledge we've never given you any ~ sorry) 6. What music 
 related data would you like to see from the bbc?
 7. If you sat in a pub and sketched an ideal schema to describe music 
 what would it look like?
 8. Would you like to sit in a pub and sketch an ideal schema to 
 describe music? We might run to a pint...

 As a first stage we're working with Robert to expand his schema to 
 allow the modelling of classical music, live music, sessions etc 
 without alienating his community. If there's enough interest it might 
 be an excuse for a musicbrainz/backstage/bbc meetup later this year

 Sorry to be quite so open ended but if you've got an opinion on any of

 this (or anything in any way related) please scribble it here

 Cheers
 Michael

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Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Nic James Ferrier
Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 All tru
 Brainz has advanced relationships to break Paul Simon and Art
 Garfunkel into paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (bad example I know)
 And for that matter Peter Andre and Jordan into Peter Andre and
 Jordan
 [http://tinyurl.com/2yxx76]

BWA HA HA!

Although some of the comments are just a touch too sarcastic for
me. Do we have to be so cruel to people like that all the time?


-- 
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk   for all your tapsell ferrier needs
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RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Michael Smethurst
James
 
Firstly a vague attempt to put your mind at rest about why the BBC is
now looking at putting third-party music information services out of
business.
 
If you mean we plan to make a service that competes with allmusic etc we
don't [honest]. We just want to be able to better represent music on the
bbc. So we can join up our data around The Fall at Glastonbury, The Fall
in session etc. We're particularly interested in better representing
music around unqiue bbc content ~ sessions, glastonbury, proms,
electric proms etc. We are not in the business of trying to to make a
music encyclopedia
 
If you mean why don't we source the data from a commercial provider
(muze, gracenotes et al) the difficulty is they tend to be product
centric. Which is all good for amazon and other people wanting to flog
music but is tricky for us.
So we'd be more interested in Hex Enduction Hour as a cultural
artefact rather than a set of saleable_items with catalogue numbers and
release dates.
If we want to provide a set list for a band at glastonbury the songs
they play are not the same as the audio artefact on the album they're
plugging. Same problem with all of classical. We need better ways to
express this model this than just artist  track  release
 
Having said that brainz at the moment is just a triangle of artist |
track | release with various advanced relationships. The difference is
Robert is also wanting to move in the direction of describing /music/
rather than products. We just wanna help this move along without
alienating his community
 
 
Secondly i'm with you on the various typos/variations of artist titles,
release titles etc. But what  musicbrainz api does give us is lucene ~
so we can ask for artist id of an artist whose title is lucenely like
REM
 
 
Thirdly the swear filter stuff is tricky. The BBCs swear filter (merde)
is the first thing i'd make open source ;)
But radio 1 homepage is already displaying incoming text message
keywords and filtering out txt swearing is also tricky
More questions for editorial, legal and policy ~ i just want the ids
 
Finally can i ask what ur artist id and track id are:
var gimpdata=Steve Miller Band~391~The Joker~E148~A~Russ
Williams~williams~the music we all love~Contact
Russ~False~http://www.virginradio.co.uk/russ/~~False~Steve Miller\'s
godfather is Les Paul, pioneer of the electric guitar.~1615 ;

Are these internal Vigin ids or do they tie into some other id schema?
 
 
 



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of James Cridland
Sent: 25 January 2007 16:55
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC


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/ 


RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Michael Smethurst
On the subject of ISRC codes I've spoken to some of the production
people about this
Apparently they're supposed to uniquely identify the audio object
So if a track appears on a single and also appears on an album with
EXACTLY the same recording it should have the same isrc code
BUT
apparently labels often prefix the isrc with something to identify the
label
so if a release is re-released on a different label the tracks on it
often have different ISRC codes even tho they're the same audio object
Basically they're not guranteed
Anyway, this is what i've been told... i'd be delighted to be told
different...
[and they're also no good for describing live music]
 
We have come across gracenotes but unfortunately (once again) they don't
really model the platonic ideal of a song (just tracks)
so mike flowers pops wonderwall
http://www.gracenote.com/prof/music/album.html/ambdreampop/7fc4bbab6b367
527a59404978be5b833.html
has no song to tie it back to oasis's wonderwall
http://www.gracenote.com/prof/music/album.html/britpop/6ffbeca624a0d776e
294e04ece5219d9.html
they just happen to label the track search as song
maybe there's more going on under the skin of the site but i doubt it



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/ 




RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Brian Butterworth
   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.

It's true, I contributed many titles to it when it was public.

It always had two problems:

1. The 'hash' value it used for a CD wasn't a large enough number to avoid
clashes.

2. The format of an 'artist' was useless.  Aside from the obvious fact that
a compilation album will have tracks by many artists, it failed with
anything complicated.

For example you might have a track that is 'by X and Y feat Z' which has
been remixed by W which appears on a compliation by V.  In addition the mix
will probably have a name too (U), so you end up having the title as TITLE
(U mix by W) and the artist as X and Y feat Z.


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.11/652 - Release Date: 25/01/2007
15:32
 

-- 
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.11/652 - Release Date: 25/01/2007
15:32
 

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RE: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Michael Smethurst
almost staying on topic and because this discussion hasn't kicked off
yet i thought i'd throw this in:
 
after scooting around http://www.virginradio.co.uk/ i was wondering
clearly u have lots of tracklistings
clearly we have a fair few
 
but if u flip between radio 3, radio 1, 1xtra, Later etc they're all
marked up differently
some are tables, some are lists, some are paragraphs with line breaks
 
I half remember a while back someone on backstage was screenscraping
radio3 tracklist pages
if that person's still about, what were the problems, what would u like
to see?
How much easier would machine accessibility be if they shared a common
markup (dare i say microformat)
 
and if they did what would you want to see there?
 
 



From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of James Cridland
Sent: 25 January 2007 16:55
To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk
Subject: Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC


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/ 


Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-26 Thread Richard P Edwards

Hi Michael,

The label's prefix is always in the ISRC code this may explain  
further...

http://www.riaa.com/issues/audio/isrc_faq.asp
My understanding is that the code is attached to the original and  
unique recording. so many recordings of the same song can have  
different codes... but each is unique in its sound after mastering.
They should never be the exact same audio object with different  
codes. That does make sense to me, as it is the recording that is  
important in this case, not the lyrical content or title.
Obviously this is designed for admin and royalty collection and  
therefore the code would probably always be considered along with the  
CD label. which incorporates the other descriptions one normally  
requires.
It can quickly become very complicated if you want to include Genre  
of music as a description, as you can see from the changing playlists  
of radio 1/2 etc.
If it is just for live music, then most listeners will be able to  
discern what they are looking at or listening to from the Venue  
details along with the Artist name.

So I would look toward the following
Name, (Song Title)
Artist,
Venue
Date
Album
Composer
Genre
Comments

Obviously there will be other BBC type info that is needed, but these  
fields should be enough for a complete description, if I follow your  
idea.

ATB
RichE


On 26 Jan 2007, at 13:21, Michael Smethurst wrote:

On the subject of ISRC codes I've spoken to some of the production  
people about this

Apparently they're supposed to uniquely identify the audio object
So if a track appears on a single and also appears on an album with  
EXACTLY the same recording it should have the same isrc code

BUT
apparently labels often prefix the isrc with something to identify  
the label
so if a release is re-released on a different label the tracks on  
it often have different ISRC codes even tho they're the same audio  
object

Basically they're not guranteed
Anyway, this is what i've been told... i'd be delighted to be told  
different...

[and they're also no good for describing live music]

We have come across gracenotes but unfortunately (once again) they  
don't really model the platonic ideal of a song (just tracks)

so mike flowers pops wonderwall
http://www.gracenote.com/prof/music/album.html/ambdreampop/ 
7fc4bbab6b367527a59404978be5b833.html

has no song to tie it back to oasis's wonderwall
http://www.gracenote.com/prof/music/album.html/britpop/ 
6ffbeca624a0d776e294e04ece5219d9.html

they just happen to label the track search as song
maybe there's more going on under the skin of the site but i doubt it

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner- 
[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

Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-25 Thread Richard P Edwards

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/




Re: [backstage] Music, (meta)data, musicbrainz and the BBC

2007-01-24 Thread David Wood

I bumped into a fully fledged spec for a music ontology the other day
[http://pingthesemanticweb.com/ontology/mo/], which looks like it hit
revision 1.0 in December. Seems it's sharing your position of wanting
to work with the musicbrainz model, but also wanting to extend it to
make it more applicable to other uses (namely linking up to other
resources)...

I've only recently started looking at the musicbrainz data, but the
first thing I noticed (as seems common to other models) is the
sometimes broken assumption that the artist name of a track should
resolve to an artist entry. E.g. 'The Pogues  Kirsty McCall' is an
artist entry for 'Fairytale of New York'. Whereas It'd be way more
useful to have two artist entries point to the track, and put the
'artist title' somewhere else. iTunes provides a compromise of making
'Artist' and 'Album artist' available to differentiate this, but this
still doesn't provide the many to one relationship that would be more
semantically correct, imho.

Although my thoughts generally tend to verge towards the 'finding new
music' angle, I'd most likely  be up for points 7  8 :-)

Cheers
Dave

PS First post n'all. And I should probably come out as a BBC employee
using non-work email 'all my own/not bbc thoughts' disclaimer applies,
etc.

On 1/24/07, Michael Smethurst [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Evening all

BBC Audio and Music (ne Radio and Music) are about to embark on the long
and winding road to a better online music offering
To this end we've been working with http://mayhem-chaos.net/blog/ of
http://musicbrainz.org/ to improve our music (meta)data

So the questions to you are:
1. Have you worked with musicbrainz data?
2. If so what's missing from / wrong with the model (we've spotted
works, movements, songs as opposed to tracks, releases conflated with
products... maybe there's something you'd like to see in there).
Responses from classical music geeks especially welcome!
3. Have you worked with the musicbrainz api?
4. If so what would you like to see there?
5. Have you ever worked with any bbc music data (unlikely cos to the
best of my knowledge we've never given you any ~ sorry)
6. What music related data would you like to see from the bbc?
7. If you sat in a pub and sketched an ideal schema to describe music
what would it look like?
8. Would you like to sit in a pub and sketch an ideal schema to describe
music? We might run to a pint...

As a first stage we're working with Robert to expand his schema to allow
the modelling of classical music, live music, sessions etc without
alienating his community. If there's enough interest it might be an
excuse for a musicbrainz/backstage/bbc meetup later this year

Sorry to be quite so open ended but if you've got an opinion on any of
this (or anything in any way related) please scribble it here

Cheers
Michael

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