DBTune blog - The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Comments

The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Yves

Yves — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:16:47 +0100

Hi Daniel!
It can, to handle a different label per language - but I don't think it can help for the merging of the different URIs, and also for cases where you need to handle several labels in one single language.
I guess my point was more pro-merging of all the different URIs for a single artist/track/album (the ID you get with the fingerprinting lookup software corresponds to the fingerprint). Then, all the different alternate spellings can be attached to it, and picking one up that you consider as canonical is another problem (slightly less important, in my opinion).

On a side-note, it'd also be neat if the voting system handled voting for a label in a particular language :-)
Cheers!
y

The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Daniel O'Connor

Daniel O'Connor — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:55:11 +0100

Doesn't xml:lang solve some of the problem here?

The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Norman

Norman — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:35:44 +0100

alternativelY

The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Norman

Norman — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:35:00 +0100

Hi Yves!
Or, alternative use the option -url instead of -nometadata.. ;-)

The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Yves

Yves — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:09:42 +0100

Actually, I just figured out that:
http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/finger...
gives access to the results corresponding to <id>.

It then looks like <id> identifies the actual fingerprint within your db. So I guess the merging you're planning will "propagate" this identification to further resources (artists, albums, etc.).

Cheers, and thanks again for the hint!
y

The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Yves

Yves — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:41:39 +0100

Hi Norman!

Oh, cool, it actually finds an ID with -nometadata: 281948 for the same example as above. Is there a way to associate this ID with an URI that I can dereference to get all information about this ID within your database (including all alternate labels)? A quick look at the AudioScrobbler API seems to key such a request on the artist name.

And that's really good news for the merging!! Also, do you have any plans on providing some structured data from the artist/track/album URI (RDF, RDFa or microformats) ?

Cheers, and thanks :-)
y

The Quest for Canonical Spelling in music metadata - Norman

Norman — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:07:57 +0100

It is true that currently we have 21 different artist pages for each (mi)spelling but our idea (thanks also to the fingerprint technology) is to merge them into a single one. The identifier you're talking about is clearly central. Indeed you can get such ID it if you specify -nometadata as option to our program! :)

As for different languages, our goal is to return whatever is specified in the preferences of the user. If he/she is japanese we will return the kanji spelling unless specified otherwise.