The arubomu library defines a simple format for representing information related to a music album, for user-specific information about a specific copy of an album (mp3 encoding parameters, source, defects, etc.), to represent songlists and statistics associated with files (e.g. number of times listened).
It is a simpler alternative than the more powerful generic RDF format that other systems use, yet more descriptive than CDDB files. It is meant as a simple, reasonable format for describing albums, one where you can edit files directly.
This format addresses the minimal practical needs for representing a music album. We do not intend this as a final solution for all possible needs ever to crop up, but we need something that works and that is adequate (i.e. cddb format is not adequate for many reasons). To give you an idea, the basic format include the following kind of information, and a little more:
This was developed part of the jukebox scripts project, which is an effort in providing scripts to cleanly manage and organize directories of entire albums converted to mp3 files.
The author believes that a full database approach like MusicBrainz is the right approach to pursue, and that it could eventually succeed (and we certainly hope so), but that it will never be able to match all of a user's mp3 entries and thus there will always be a need for representing and editing information locally (even if just for a cache). Besides, at the moment MusicBrainz does not include label and release date and disc information so we have decided to go through with this project anyway because we use and need this now.
Also, think of the cases where an album is a home-made compilation of songs made by a friend, or recorded by a local artist. These should not go in a central database, but it is nevertheless necessary to be able to gather or enter information about that title.
The album chunk is meant to contain information about the album that is entirely independent of the user and that could be shared between different users. There is space to shove reviews in it but personal comments that relate to the specific copy of the music (e.g. encoding errors) should not be included in there.
There is also a "loose" version of the album format, that is meant to be used within album lists (see Container formats below). The idea is that we should be able to write in a single file lists of misc. info about an album without having to provide the full set of required info for a strict album.
The user chunk is meant to contain information about the album that is only dependent of the user and that should not be shared between different users. This is where peculiarities, encoding problems, missing songs, etc. will be described. Some of that information can be used to verify the validity of the XML file against the files stored for the music.
A simple way to stored references to songs. Some scripts can use this as a way to provide compilations of songs.
A file format that allows storing which songs have been listened to and how many times.
Copyright (C) 2001-2004 Martin Blais. All Rights Reserved.
This code is distributed under the GNU General Public License;
Martin Blais <blais@furius.ca>