Reinventing the wheel.  What is needed is a knowledge of DISCOGRAPHY
among these computer geeks who think that nothing has happened outside
their little world.

Mike Biel  [log in to unmask]



-------- Original Message --------

From: "Schooley, John" <[log in to unmask]>

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/4-ways-one-big-database-would-help-music-fans-industry/

4 Ways One Big Database Would Help Music Fans, Industry

"The solution to this and other problems dogging the music industry
could be forehead-slappingly simple: one big, free, public database
with, at the very least, song titles in one column and unique
identifiers in another. When online and mobile music services build
their own content databases out of the labels' catalogs, they would have
incentives to use the same numbers to identify each song, for the
reasons laid out below. Music services already apply their own unique
identifiers to songs in their catalogs, so the use of numbers is not the
issue - they just need to be the same numbers.

This database would have to be free, readily available and totally
transparent, visible to music fans and industry people alike, because
the barrier to entry for startups to use the system would have to be
zero. Open source software making use of the data set, available on the
same website, might encourage services to use the numbers."