As an aficionado, and burgeoning collector, of classical music, the topic of metadata in digital music collections has become a sort of pet project of mine. Having recently gone through the process of re-importing my entire classical collection (a small one, admittedly, around 1000 songs), I can attest to the fact that attempting to adequately manage the metadata of such a collection is a labor of love. Inconsistent data entry, missing or incorrect metadata, and some unique problems that hamper classical listeners in comparison to those with mainly rock/pop collections, all conspired against my efforts to bring some much needed order and cohesion to my music files.
In a recent blog, LS 566 classmate Mary Elizabeth Watson touched on the subject of metadata and digital classical music collections, and, with reference to the Naxos Blog on classical music, pointed to some of the more significant hurdles that classical listeners must face in organizing their digital collections. Some of the problematic areas mentioned include: the lack of authority control across metadata entries, the incompatibility of metadata tags and their functionality across varying music software and devices, and the purposeful misuse of metadata in order to work around those functionality issues.
One of the fundamental difficulties classical listeners face when dealing with their digital collections is that, by and large, digital music platforms, devices, and software were made with the classical genre as a bit of an afterthought, if thought of at all. Software such as iTunes emphasizes Artists, Albums, and especially single Songs as primary categories, which have limited, or differing, usefulness to a classical listener, who may prefer organizing and searching collections by Composer or complete Work/Piece (i.e. Beethoven's Symphony #5 rather than just the 2nd Movement). Audio quality, perhaps not a primary consideration when listening to the latest Katy Perry single, but paramount when trying to squeeze every ounce out of Mahler, is often compromised by the lack of support for certain lossless file formats. In other instances, the incompatibility of certain metadata tags (i.e. the Disk # tag in iTunes) across players/devices makes attaining even the proper playback order for a piece impossible. While there are a lot of software options out there, all of them seem to have their drawbacks, whether it be: overly simplistic, overly complex, poor compatibility with your purchased music device, lack of compatibility with downloaded music file types, or a myriad of other reasons.
While the picture may look slightly bleak for classical listeners, there's actually great reason for optimism, however. There has never seemed to be a better selection of recordings available, at a better price, thanks in part to digital distribution. Listeners have unprecedented control over the organization and description of their personal collections, depending on how much time they want to sink in to the process. And on the software front, software platforms have gradually begun to include more and more features that are beneficial to classical collectors in particular (i.e. iTunes improved functionality for multi-disc sets, options for gapless playback, lossless audio compression, etc...). But there is still a good deal of work to be done (and a true software platform/device built for the classical genre wouldn't be bad either), and one of the areas that can definitely be improved is musical metadata. Next blog will take a look at one of those problem areas...authority control.
Good post. I've had to struggle with a lot of these issues before as well, particularly performer versus composer, and finding a player that supports lossless formats. Others I hadn't even realized were a problem. One more example of why interoperability is a good thing I suppose. Out of curiosity, what are your solutions to some of these problems?
ReplyDeleteI think some of the issues will only be alleviated in continued software and device development, as companies adapt and add features from other systems into their own. There's really no reason, for instance, why all players and software should not recognize the "Disk" field, but it may simply be a case that they haven't been able to integrate it yet. Other problems, such as the lack of gapless playback, lossless compression formats, those have gradually been integrated among certain platforms, but there's some work to be done (i.e. FLAC in iTunes).
ReplyDeleteFor the metadata problems, I see two main problem areas: lack of authority control and a general lack of fields or functionality that classical music, particularly, could benefit from. For authority control, it's a simple problem to solve in theory, but whether music publishers could be persuaded to conform to such a standard is questionable at best. On the latter issue, the creation of fields to accommodate information such as the overall Work that a piece belongs to, what Movement it is, and greater flexibility for the Performer fields would be a good start, preventing us from trying to shoehorn all that information into the Title or Artist tags. A device that could handle displaying the additional lines of information wouldn't hurt either.
Last, though the market is competitive, there needs to be some common ground found between the various software and device platforms. Chances are, whatever software you import your collection with is going to be the software you stick with, for better or for worse. Having tried at least 4 different programs over the last month, and trying to: restructure my metadata, provide album artwork, and ensure proper organization each time I try a new one out is simply too much of a hassle. As so much money at stake in this, however, I see the possibility for cooperation on any level to be pretty unlikely.
Music is a great example of what I consider the "great social metadata experiment" ... somewhere early in the semester, I mentioned that music catalogers have always been at the forefront of cataloging thought and practice due to FRBR-related needs (lots of expressions/manifestations/items exist of musical works) as well as the cataloging detail needed for full description. But remember, cataloging is a cooperative activity, and music catalogers, too, share their work because many libraries held the same recordings in their collections so there was a need to share MaRC records across libraries.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm watching for today in the music social metadata world is the awakening to commonalities across individuals' collections (and by extension, individuals' musical tastes) to see if the sharing ethic arises. If not, we may eventually find ourselves returning to seek the good graces of music catalogers and community-based collections of (digital) recordings because it simply takes too much damn time and continuing attention to keep a collection of recordings organized! :-)
--Dr. MacCall