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cc-metadata - Re: embedding metadata in MIDI?

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Subject: discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

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  • From: Kevin Shrieve <kevin AT lumiere.net>
  • To: cc-metadata AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: embedding metadata in MIDI?
  • Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 17:18:23 -0700

John Kwasnik wrote:
[Maybe it's not so much of a problem ... MIDI is waning in popularity. The tiny files (<<100KB) were most popular 8 years ago when bandwidth was small.]

Mike Linksvayer wrote:
I guess that MIDI will be around forever, and it's kind of interesting from a reuse perspective as, if I understand correctly, it should be far easier for an average user to create derivative MIDI works than it is for an average user to do anything meaningful with raw audio. So I think it's worthwhile do recommend embedding license info in MIDI files.

I'd like to enthusiastically endorse that perspective. MIDI has great un-tapped potential as a platform for collaborative culture building, and for making music from one culture available for re-use/re-purposing/re-creation by people from other cultures. It is uniquely useful for sharing "unfinished" background arrangements that can be customized (key, tempo, instrumentation, order and length of sections) for use by live musicians and singers. And because of the tiny file sizes very inexpensive computers can work with them.

Some other characteristics of MIDI file sharing might lead one to cheer for its demise, such as the likelihood of the playback sounding very different than what the composer intended, the bad electric guitar sounds in the MIDI sound generators, and the fact that MIDI file generation programs (such as Band-In-A-Box) are so willing and able to tirelessly crank out heartless renditions of pop tunes. (Don't get me wrong, I think BIAB is an amazing tool when used with care.)

I, for one, am investing a lot of thought and energy into defining how I might use "open source" MIDI files to help build the foundation for systems of popular creative collaboration, and I anticipate defining ways to use the defined metadata fields to embed info that would only be of interest within these systems (e.g., the dominant musical mode, dominant ethnicity of the style, etc.).

And of course clarifying the licensing terms would be very important for something like that.

I do vote for using the already-defined copyright field, even if one has to repeat the info in a track field so that people are more likely to see it.

I guess the copyright field is unformatted text -- would you use it in such a way that it could be machine-readable, say by a search engine?

Thanks,

Kevin Shrieve

http://www.mp3.com/DreamArtScience







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