Musical Metadata, Part 1

Folks who know me know that I am an avid consumer of music. I own nearly 6,000 CDs and albums (yes, I still own vinyl records). And I have them all cataloged in a Filemaker database on my PC that I sync with my iPhone so I can check my collection when I’m out shopping. You see, in the past I sometimes bought something that I already owned.

I also have more than a terabyte of MP3 music on my computer, and that is a difficult thing to manage. I am still using iTunes, but it is not efficient and I’d really like to find something better.

I also have an iPod Touch that I keep populated with music. I also have one of the old 80 GB iPod classic models, but it is basically a brick. One day it just up and stopped working. I’d like to get it fixed someday… well, what I’d really like is a nice MP3 player that stores a lot more music, say 500 GB… but none exist that I know of.

Please if you know of one, leave me a comment about it!

Anyway, I told you all of the above as an introduction to a new series of blog posts I’ll be putting up here on the metadata of music. I guess only a true geek like me would think about metadata when listening to music, but stick with me.

OK, so why did I start thinking about metadata? Well, MP3s are all about the metadata, son! If you don’t get the metadata right, then the MP3 player is not as easy to use as it could be. I’ll be talking more about this in this series of blog entries (didja notice that Part 1? Yes, that means there will be additional parts upcoming.)

I’ll try to make this series fun, yet educational. If you want to read something less “fun” about metadata, check out my article for Database Trends & Applications on the topic of metadata titled The Growing Importance of Metadata.

That’s it for today… but check in regularly as I explore the concept of metadata within the context of MP3 audio files…

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