[ogg-dev] The use for an XML based metadata format

[Ian Malone]

Ralph Giles wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 01:19:05PM +0100, Ian Malone wrote:
> 
>> as artist=(composer) Beethoven), I think cast lists for films present
>> a similar problem.  There is consistency and indexability to be
>> addressed (Ludvig van Beethoven; Beethoven, Ludvig van;
>> Beethoven).
> 
> ID3 has a concept of "sort" tags, which provide a string for sorting 
> purposes which is different from the (presumedly full name) of the usal 
> tag. TSOP="Beethoven", TCOM="Ludwig van Beethoven".
> 
> If you want something more precise, you have to link to unique 
> identifiers for a particular artist, like a musicbrainz id. I
> gather that's not what you're interested in here?
> 

Well, musicbrainz is great, but it won't identify actors
(for example).  More generally for organisation internal
metadata where you might want to say 'Bob recorded this'
musicbrainz is never going to give you an ID unless Bob
also happens to be a successful recording artist.  You
could use an organisation internal ID scheme of course;
a new band releasing a track online still faces a problem
though.

Actually it might be instructive to bring up (some of!)
the tags from a file that I have on my hd:
title=Bad Penny
artist=Rory Gallagher
MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID=ca0d3987-5d30-4f29-8863-599cc71b36d0
MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMSTATUS=official
MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMTYPE=compilation
MUSICBRAINZ_ARTISTID=933fdeae-ec68-48e9-a752-8bcfd44bc429
MUSICBRAINZ_NONALBUM=0
MUSICBRAINZ_SORTNAME=Gallagher, Rory
MUSICBRAINZ_TRACKID=e7c53164-8d74-4306-87be-e78fac6fb1a8
MUSICBRAINZ_VARIOUSARTISTS=0
RELEASECOUNTRY=GB

All capitalised tags are the result of an MB automatic
tagging tool.  The MB one includes all the uuids, but
also pulls in a 'sortname'. (Incidentally the album name
had been added when encoding, I suspect that's why it was
unmodified.)  Despite UUIDs there's an acknowledgement
here that you don't want to have to query the MB database
every time you want to search your music collection, the
UUID's main feature as far as I can see is to help tie
the database together at their end.

What I think would be useful would be a way of specifying
names which makes it easier to do structured sort.
Having separate first name(s) and last name fields would
work for most cases, but a vCard-like sortname field is
probably more realistic.  Make the sort name a mandatory
part of the name description and suggest to application
developers how it should be used.

-- 
imalone