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Music & Metadata: Do Songs Remain The Same?

Event Interactive 2011
Format Panel
Organizer Jess Hemerly University of California, Berkeley
Description Metadata may be an afterthought when it comes to most people's digital music collections, but when it comes to finding, buying, selling, rating, sharing, or describing music, little matters more. Metadata defines how we interact and talk about music—from discreet bits like titles, styles, artists, genres to its broader context and history. Metadata builds communities and industries, from the local fan base to the online social network. Its value is immense. But who owns it? Some sources are open, peer-produced and free. Others are proprietary and come with a hefty fee. And who determines its accuracy? From CDDB to MusicBrainz and Music Genome Project to AllMusic, our panel will explore the importance of metadata and information about music from three angles. First, production, where we'll talk about the quality and accuracy of peer-produced sources for metatdata and music information, like MusicBrainz and Wikipedia, versus proprietary sources, like CDDB. Second, we'll look at the social importance of music data, like how we use it to discuss music and how we tag it to enhance music description and discovery. Finally, we'll look at some legal issues, specifically how patent, copyright, and click-through agreements affect portability and ownership of data and how metadata plays into or out of the battles over "walled garden" systems like Facebook and Apple's iEmpire. We'll also play a meta-game with metadata during the panel to demonstrate how it works and why it is important.
Questions
Answered
  1. What is music metadata and why do bands, fans, and producers need it?
  2. Why are data and metadata important to the social engagement with music?
  3. What are the tradeoffs for creators and consumers of data in open versus closed data resources?
  4. Who determines the quality of music information?
  5. What are the major legal issues around data ownership and use and how will they impact the future of music?
Level Intermediate
Category Music
Tags Information, metadata, open access