Swing DJ’s Album & Song Data Base

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Swifty
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#16 Post by Swifty » Mon Dec 06, 2004 1:15 pm

I don't rate any of the songs in my collection. Actually I don't put a number rank on any albums either.

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Bob the Builder
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#17 Post by Bob the Builder » Mon Dec 06, 2004 3:32 pm

Some of them look great, but they are far on beyond what I was thinking of. I was thinking of a very simple data base, which would have the following info.
Person who submitted it - contact for that person - album name - Artist name- song titles - length of song - rating
more info could be added like - BPM, recording date, composer, but this is just additional info.

I'm not a fan of Album reviews, as I've very rarely agreed with many I've seen, but I have agreed a lot more with a song by song rating.
Every one is going to rate differently. I would expect that, and I would disagree with some ratings, but this is why you would have several ratings by different people.
The idea of the Data Base is as a tool in finding new music. Not as something that will have every answer.

Brian
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Nate Dogg
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#18 Post by Nate Dogg » Mon Dec 06, 2004 4:20 pm

Bob the Builder wrote: I'm not a fan of Album reviews, as I've very rarely agreed with many I've seen, but I have agreed a lot more with a song by song rating.
Every one is going to rate differently. I would expect that, and I would disagree with some ratings, but this is why you would have several ratings by different people.
The idea of the Data Base is as a tool in finding new music. Not as something that will have every answer.
Brian
In a way I agree with some of the criticism towards album reviews, they can be either too vague or I just don't agree with the reviewer. Hence, allowing mulitple viewpoints is so attractive.

I like the idea of commenting on songs, which songs work for dancing, which don't, etc...

As for ratings, they are subjective and inherently imperfect. I don't mind ratings being part of the system. But, I really would like to see short reviews of songs/albums, so we can know the "why" behind a rating.

That is one reason I liked Ron's reviews, he told us why he liked albums, he pointed out great songs on the albums. Other sites are less specific and less useful for me.

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Bob the Builder
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#19 Post by Bob the Builder » Mon Dec 06, 2004 6:26 pm

That would be great,
It would take a lot of work by everyone to put it together.
However, many people how have their music on computer, have songs rated already, so the information is all-ready out there. It just needs to be submitted.

Brian
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Matthew
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#20 Post by Matthew » Tue Dec 07, 2004 12:15 am

Nate Dogg wrote:*snip*

As for ratings, they are subjective and inherently imperfect. I don't mind ratings being part of the system. But, I really would like to see short reviews of songs/albums, so we can know the "why" behind a rating.

That is one reason I liked Ron's reviews, he told us why he liked albums, he pointed out great songs on the albums. Other sites are less specific and less useful for me.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Those reviews are so helpful because he notes specific aspects of the music, and comments on why he does or doesn't like them. I think that ratings along with descriptors would be much more useful than ratings alone.

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#21 Post by Toon Town Dave » Tue Dec 07, 2004 3:29 am

Nate Dogg wrote:A few comments:

I don't think the online database needs to be PHP, as long as it is linked to this site.

I like the idea of having a master review with comments by various users linked to the review.
To respond to this comment and go along with others' suggestions:

Despite the fact that I think PHP as a development tool is crap, I think it's the best fit for this as phpBB provides much of the basic functionality.

1) We already use it and have some infrastructure for logins, permissions, etc. It's less trouble for users than separate logins or reverse-engineering the authentication process (unless someone happens to have a nice ER diagram of the phpBB database).

2) People have suggested both ratings, comments and opportunity for multiple ratings. It is basically the same as any discussion topic on this board except there is additional meta-info for the topic (the track list, average rating, etc) and meta-info associated with each post (individual ratings). We could use the current phpBB as a boiler-plate code to start with.

3) Support and maintainence is easier because we only need a php expert, not experts in several different languages. Also, php is commonly supported in fairly basic packages from most hosting providers these days. Other tools (Zope would be great) are not as well supported, Java based tools (the current trendy stuff) are too much of a pig and will probably up the server requirements (costing Jesse more $$). CGI scripts from scratch are a pain for any application of consequence when there are higher level tools.

Who are the database experts here? Before any coding starts, we should come up with a reasonable design of the (as main_stem pointed out) "solid Information Architecture". It would be nice to get a team of 3 or 4 people to flesh out a final design and build it.

kitkat, thanks for the mock-ups it helps. A question, what does the "Update Album Statistics" on the review page do?

In the mean time, lets keep up the discussion and figure out what features we want.
Last edited by Toon Town Dave on Tue Dec 07, 2004 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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CafeSavoy
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#22 Post by CafeSavoy » Tue Dec 07, 2004 4:00 am

Toon Town Dave wrote:
Who are the database experts here? Before any coding starts, we should come up with a reasonable design of the (as main_stem pointed out) "solid Information Architecture". It would be nice to get a team of 3 or 4 people to flesh out a final design and build it.
Great points. I think we need at least two databases with the following fields:


Song Database
SONGID,
ALBUMID,
album artist,
album name,
track number,
track name,
track artist,
recording date,
session number

Comment Database
SONGID,
reviewer,
Yes/No?,
Overall Rating,
Danceability,
AudioQuality,
Comment

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kitkat
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#23 Post by kitkat » Tue Dec 07, 2004 8:49 am

Toon Town Dave wrote:Who are the database experts here? Before any coding starts, we should come up with a reasonable design of the (as main_stem pointed out) "solid Information Architecture". It would be nice to get a team of 3 or 4 people to flesh out a final design and build it.
Just to make it clear, I did that mock-up to present my desires for 2 things: 1) what'd be stored in the system and 2) useable correlations between information types.
(By the way, I think I left in a few unnecessary features of type 2, such as being able to click on a genre. I probably should've changed that to be in black so it didn't look like a link.)
Toon Town Dave wrote:kitkat, thanks for the mock-ups it helps. A question, what does the "Update Album Statistics" on the review page do?
Then again, you probably realized that. ;-) Update Album Statistics pretty much updates what Rayned said belonged to the "Song Database:"
SONGID
ALBUMID
album artist
album name
track number
track name
track artist
recording date
session number
(I'd add BPM)
(I'd add time)
(I'd add an Amazon link)
(I'd add an Allmusic link)
(I'd add an MP3.com link)

I don't believe I have any suggestions to add to Rayned's "Comment Database" structure.

I think it might be nice to add a "User Database," which would be done already, I imagine, if it were linked to the SwingDJs.com board system.
Login
(Password)
Real name
City
State/Province/Region
Country

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JesseMiner
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#24 Post by JesseMiner » Tue Dec 07, 2004 10:46 am

I have been doing a lot of work lately in both PHP and MySQL, so I would definitely be willing to be a part of the development team.

Dave makes a lot of strong points above about why this application should be written in PHP, and I agree with all of them. It would be the smart choice to use the existing user authentication from our phpbb discussion board if we really want it to be integrated into the swingdjs.com site. For the same reasons, MySQL would be the database to use, the same one used by the discussion board.

Rayned got the ball rolling with talk of the potential database tables involved, but let's not get too ahead of ourselves by each posting what we think the tables/fields should be. Let's keep the brainstorming on a more abstract level discussing what features would be desireable. Once a development team is put together, THEN the database can be mapped out by the team making the features, at least the do-able ones, into reality.

I will also ask around as I know there are some other DJs who have been doing development work similar to this in the past - just to make sure we're not reinventing the wheel.

Honestly, I believe creating the database will be much easier than the task of populating it. That's going to take a lot of work.

Jesse

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#25 Post by Toon Town Dave » Tue Dec 07, 2004 12:24 pm

Excellent discussion, lets keep it up.

Quick question regarding the Amazon, AMG, etc. link:

Would a link directly to the page with the information be desired or would a link that submits a relevant query be adequate?

I'm asking because if we store a direct link and say AMG does some house cleaning and the URLs change, the information in our database will become useless. The upside of it is it can save a couple clicks to get to the information.

My thoughts: I like the AMG link (or search) because there is more information and now soundbites. I would support a search rather than a direct link to minimize the risk of our info becoming obsolete.

As far as Amazon or other commercial sites, we should consider affiliate programs from some of the on-line retailers. It could generate a little extra cash to help with the operating cost of the site. Each affiliate program will probably have some magic bit that will let the retailer know the click-through came from swingdjs.

To get a little ahead of ourselves, I'd suggest splitting up the proposed song database into two tables, one for albums (information common to all tracks on an album) and one for tracks (songs, information unique to each track). I'd also add a field for the release date of the album and the label. Maybe original release date would also be useful for re-released stuff ... thoughts?

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kitkat
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#26 Post by kitkat » Tue Dec 07, 2004 1:36 pm

Toon Town Dave wrote:I would support a search rather than a direct link to minimize the risk of our info becoming obsolete.
Yeah, but if I wanted to click through all the pages to get to a citation, I'd just type www.allmusic.com into my browser and do the search myself. Why on earth would I go to swingdjs.com first?
Let it risk going obsolete, but make it so any user with free time can update it.

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CafeSavoy
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#27 Post by CafeSavoy » Tue Dec 07, 2004 2:44 pm

Toon Town Dave wrote: To get a little ahead of ourselves, I'd suggest splitting up the proposed song database into two tables, one for albums (information common to all tracks on an album) and one for tracks (songs, information unique to each track). I'd also add a field for the release date of the album and the label. Maybe original release date would also be useful for re-released stuff ... thoughts?
I did think we'd need an album specific database too. Although when designing it we will have to keep in mind that some albums are compilations and the tracks can have limited overlap of information.

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kitkat
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#28 Post by kitkat » Tue Dec 07, 2004 4:18 pm

So I take it there are 3 decent ways to define a "song":

1) Particular track on a particular album; title, recording date, etc. are merely characteristics that can be matched up w/ other songs' characteristics.

2) Particular title + recording date

3) Particular title + recording date + mastering job

I think I'd go for the first and have ways of linking "songs" that match each other in all 3 criteria of option #3 if it's really important to see all the places that any one take shows up. The only problem is that people would have to be meticulous with spelling & date formatting.

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CafeSavoy
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#29 Post by CafeSavoy » Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:44 am

kitkat wrote:So I take it there are 3 decent ways to define a "song":

1) Particular track on a particular album; title, recording date, etc. are merely characteristics that can be matched up w/ other songs' characteristics.

2) Particular title + recording date

3) Particular title + recording date + mastering job

I think I'd go for the first and have ways of linking "songs" that match each other in all 3 criteria of option #3 if it's really important to see all the places that any one take shows up. The only problem is that people would have to be meticulous with spelling & date formatting.
Option 1 doesn't help you deal with duplicates. And that is a major shortcoming.

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main_stem
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#30 Post by main_stem » Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:49 am

For some reason this never got posted, but anyway I'd be willing to do the front end work (design, ui and stuff) on the sub site if some one is willing to mark it up.
"We called it music."
— Eddie Condon

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