[Playlist] Getting additional fields added to XSPF?

[Nicholas Humfrey]

Hi!


Section 3.2 of the XSPF specification states:

"The function of a playlist is not to communicate metadata about the 
composer, song title, etc. Metadata is hard and there are many providers 
already. We decided that we couldn't compete, and that there was no need 
for us to try. Moreover, good metadata does not travel well — every user 
has to recreate it. Metadata should come from external sources and 
namespaces like MusicBrainz or Gracenote; this what the XSPF link and 
meta elements are for."

However after stating that, the XSPF does support quite a few different 
fields, communicating quite a lot of different types of information.


One area that it doesn't cover is contributors. I suspect the the 
'creator' field was deliberately vague, so that it can be used flexibly 
for Composer, Performer, Spoken Word etc... but it would be really 
useful, if it was possible to describe contributors better.

Is there any appetite for extending XSPF?



Alternatively, can anyone suggest a music metadata standard, for 
exchanging metadata as a file, that is better suited to this task?

The ones I am aware of are:
- the Music Ontology
- DDeX


Is there anything else I have missed?  MusicBrainz provides a mechanism 
for querying for music metadata, but it does not specify an exchange 
format.



nick.