[uf-new] Microformat for Music Downloads

[Scott Reynen]

On Mar 9, 2007, at 3:28 AM, Marian Steinbach wrote:

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

Let's not make it any more complicated than it absolutely needs to  
be.  I'm not even convinced we need to worry about album in the first  
draft.  We can always add later, but we can't easily take away  
complication after it's in use.  I have two general comments.  First,  
I don't see any benefit to restricting this to music.  All of your  
use cases seem to be just as relevant to non-music audio downloads.   
Second, I think it makes sense for the various elements to be  
containers, with the possibility of containing information about the  
artist (e.g. URL), track (e.g. recorded date), and album (e.g.  
published date).  I think hCard and hCalendar could offer some useful  
semantics here.  E.g.:

<div class="audio-download">
<a href="pl.mp3" type="audio/mpeg"><span class="artist vcard"><span  
class="fn org">Chicago Public Radio</span></span> -
<span class="track vevent"><span class="summary">#188: Kid Logic</ 
span></span></a>
(from the album <em class="album vevent"><span class="summary">This  
American Life</span></em>)
</div>

Another option would be to use hAtom for everything:

<div class="audio-download hfeed">
<div class="hentry">
<a href="pl.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" rel="enclosure"><span  
class="author vcard"><span class="fn org">Chicago Public Radio</ 
span></span> -
<span class="entry-title">#188: Kid Logic</span></a>
(from the album <em class="feed-title">This American Life</em>)
</div>
</div>

Here simply adding the class "audio-download" to the root hfeed  
element would give existing hAtom properties new meaning, e.g. feed- 
title is album, author is artist, entry-title is track.  This is  
basically treating every audio download as a podcast with (as little  
as) one entry.  The main problem I see is that hAtom requires a date  
updated, and those don't appear to be commonly published on music  
download sites.

--
Scott Reynen
MakeDataMakeSense.com