[uf-discuss] haudio contributor

[Andy Mabbett]

In message <47A5E5E2.2010206 at hubmed.org>, Alf Eaton <lists at hubmed.org>
writes

>I was looking at using haudio today, but stumbled on the 'contributor'
>field: is there a reason it's 'contributor' rather than 'creator', even
>for the main creator (artist, in music) of the piece of audio?

It seems strange that the microformat does not distinguish between the
main "contributor" and others. Both the Beatles and Geoff Emerick
"contributed" to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", for instance:

  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper%27s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band>

but one is clearly more significant than the other.

I can find no evidence of any published website which does not make such
distinctions (anyone is welcome to provide some).

There does seem to be a tendency in microformats, towards unduly low
granularity; I find that strange.

>It doesn't seem to be based on established practice, as from the
>overview it looks like existing markup overwhelming uses 'artist'.
>http://microformats.org/wiki/audio-info-brainstorming#artist

Although in classical music, the composer may be as-, or more-,
prominent than the artist; likewise the conductor. Higher granularity
would allow for such distinctions.

Here too, we might learn from the Dublin Core "Simple + Qualified" model
[1]. We could have several classes:

        contributor

then:

        contributor-artist
        contributor-composer
        contributor-conductor
        contributor-engineer
        etc.

and agents "may" entitled to treat all the latter as equivalent to the
first, but "should" preserve the full values when exporting.

In practise, the latter set could omit the "contributor-" stem, and
agents would then treat it as implied.


Some people might argue instead for a 'contributor-type' property, but
it is common usage to simply imply the main contributor's role:

   *    "The Joshua Tree" by U2, produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois

   *    Beethoven's fifth Symphony, conducted by Simon Rattle

   *    Smetana's Ma Vlast, performed by the London Philharmonic
        Orchestra

(note also the common usage of the verbs "produced", "conducted" and
"performed" rather than the role-nouns of "producer", "conductor" and
"performer".



[1] A parallel might also be drawn with tel vs. tel-work, tel-cell, etc.

-- 
Andy Mabbett