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Digital Culture

Have I mentioned that I love iTunes?

So here’s my latest revelation about iTunes: it isn’t the Store, or the media playing capabilities. No, no, no. It’s all about the metadata. The usefulness of it comes almost entirely from the complete and utter ease of applying data about the songs to themselves, and then being able to use said data to organize and search your media.

MP3’s have supported metadata (id3 tags) since the standard’s inception, but most media players only use this metadata for informing the user: what song is playing, what song is coming up. They didn’t let you interact with the data, apply your own info to it, and search and sort based on it. This is really the strength of iTunes…from being able to set the “style” (rock, pop, rap) to being able to “rate” the songs with a star count, to being able to attach cover art to a song (as easy as dragging and dropping from a browser…I just search Amazon for the album cover, then yank it).

So that you, Apple, for finally allowing my metadata and media to mix. I love it.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

2 replies on “Have I mentioned that I love iTunes?”

Unfortunately, many programs and organization rely on a CDDB database to determine the metadata to put in the ID3 tags. There are no restrictions or standards on the data in the global CDDBs, and the data is typically entered by the first person to get a chance to enter it. Potentially, this means you could potentially buy Rob Zombie’s “Past, Present, and Future” and have it come up ‘Easy Listening’.

This has happened to me a few times: I have some rather esoteric electronica that comes up either (a) in the wrong genre (i.e. a Cex CD I have that come up in genre ‘gay’) or (b) as a completely wrong album.

Need some metadata to describe the metadata…

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