The most compatible to store is the entire TOC, or a slightly compressed
version (using delta values instead of actual CD-frame offset). We would
then automatically have the track lengths as well.
> * Artist - primary artist on the CD
We must do our best to reduce the ambiguity concerning what the fields
are intended for. If I have a classical piece, composed by a famous
composer, played by a famous orchestra and with a solo performance of a
famous soloist, then who is the artist. Performer narrows it down a bit
further.
> * Title - primary title for the CD
It is IMHO important to complement this field with a "No. in CD
set"-field so that we don't have a lot of "disc 2" written in the title
field.
> * Disc Info - extra information about the CD
> * Playorder - suggested playing order (is this stored in the network DB,
> or just local?)
Is this really needed. You already have a playing order suggested on the
CD, implied by the track numbers.
>
> and for each track:
>
> * Track title -- title of the track
I think that this can be expanded a bit, since we want to avoid having
things like "Jaws - Suite (Main title - Chrissie's Death - Out To Sea -
End Title)". In ID3v2 I broke down title into three strings in the
following way:
TIT1
The 'Content group description' frame is used if the sound belongs to a
larger category of sounds/music. For example, classical music is often
sorted in different musical sections (e.g. "Piano Concerto", "Weather -
Hurricane").
TIT2
The 'Title/Songname/Content description' frame is the actual name of the
piece (e.g. "Adagio", "Hurricane Donna").
TIT3
The 'Subtitle/Description refinement' frame is used for information
directly related to the contents title (e.g. "Op. 16" or "Performed live
at Wembley").
> * Track ext info -- extra info about that track
>
> I think we all agree that we need at least these features, at a bare
> minimum.
>
> I can think of the following "new features" that could be added:
>
> * Sub-titles for the CD
> * Artist (and even album) information for each track (for compilations,
> etc.)
> * Sub-track and Super-Track information (arbitrarily defined by
> timestamps, related in a hierarchical manner to physical CD tracks)
> * production information (engineer, producer, recording studio, dates,
> live/studio, etc., etc.)
> * lotsa freeform stuff (probably an XML or property/value approach for
> freeform data)
> * Composer (per track, per album)
And Lyricist/Text writer (All CD:s are not music)
> * copyright, running times, genres, etc.
You have the running time in the TOC
Genres is generally a bad thing to include. There is no good way to
categorize them and is proven to be a bit too subjective.
>
> Plus, we probably would want to support:
> * International characters
> * multiple language records
> * Multiple disc ID systems (might be best to just record the M:S:F
> information for all tracks, and let people ask based on that information.
> to hell with hashes! :-) )
> * abbreviations for Artist, Track, etc. (to allow display on small
> screens, like car displays or consumer Jukeboxes)
>
-- /Martin Nilsson - "We predict the future. The best way to predict the future is to invent it."