[uf-new] Microformat for Music Downloads

[Kevin Marks]

On Mar 9, 2007, at 1:28 AM, Marian Steinbach wrote:

>
> You're right, the 'type' attribute can be used to declare that a
> hyperlink points to a certain mime type, e.g. audio/mpeg. E.g.
>
> <a href="/download.php?id=1234" type="audio/mpeg">...</a>
>
> I absolutely agree that this should be used. But that only solves one
> of several problems.

Using rel-enclosure is the common way to express the link as a  
download (as in podcasts)

http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-enclosure

the alternates discussion is helpful here too:

http://microformats.org/wiki/alternates

>
> The microformat for music downloads should also help to identify the
> most common metadata about that music file, apart from the media type.
>
> I started this thread with the aim to gather and discuss requirements
> from the people who care.
>
>> From looking at many, many examples, it seems as pubulishers are most
> frequently giving the following information (of course in an
> unstructured format):
>
> - Track title (i.e. song title) -- most frequent
> - Artist name (i.e. singer, band or musisician) -- very frequent
> - Album title -- less frequent

Do think about classical music too. also see

http://microformats.org/wiki/media-info for extensive examples of  
current practice.

>
> Evertyhing else that could be said about a track is much less
> frequently told. That could be duration, file size, bitrate etc.,
> recording date and place (especially for live recordings).
>
> Here is a simple draft with artist and track title:
>
> <div class="music-download">
> <a href="pl.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"><span class="artist">The Shins</ 
> span> -
> <span class="title">Phantom Limb</span></a>
> </div>
>
> Draft with album title:
>
> <div class="music-download">
> <a href="pl.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"><span class="artist">The Shins</ 
> span> -
> <span class="title">Phantom Limb</span></a>
> (from the album <em class="album">Wincing The Night Away</em>)
> </div>

using 'title' is a bad idea, as it has a different meaning in hCard -  
try and re-use the existing classes to mean the same things first:

http://microformats.org/wiki/existing-classes

>
> Any comments so far? (It'll get more complicated soon enough!)

moving this to the wiki could make sense, either as part of media- 
info (which is a rather bigger problem).

Maybe the way to break the impasse would be for music to be a proper  
subset of media-info?