IM(usic)DB?
Why isn’t there an Internet Music Database analogous to the Internet Movie Database? That is, a collaborative/community-built resource filled with information about musicians and albums?
The closest thing we have is freedb, or the commercial-equivalent cddb, but these are very different from what I’m imagining. With freedb, you can look up artists, albums, tracks, and genres. That’s about it. No lists of the musicians/instruments playing on each track. No links to reviews, commentary, images of the musicians, etc.. No collaborative quality rating system. None of the other various resources that make IMDB the top result in Google for most movies (usually higher even than the studio’s own page for that movie).
So am I missing something? If not, anyone interested in starting the Internet Music Database?
Ian Westcott Jan 28
All Music Guide serves this role pretty well for me. They have a pretty slick setup, too — much more aesthetically pleasing and usefully designed than IMDB.
Andres Salomon Jan 28
FreeDB is awful; try http://www.musicbrainz.org/. You can create an account, and then make corrections to albums (which other people with accounts can then vote on ). Overall, it’s a great resource for tagging (even if libmusicbrainz does have a horrible API). I do wish it provided artist info and stuff, though.
ajax Jan 28
discogs is outstanding.
zip Jan 28
the music-imdb should have Audioscrobbler integrated too.