4 ms·

I have the opposite reaction to this situation: I avoid products that use DBs for smallish datasets because the DB blob doesn't dedup well, and that impacts me

I have the opposite reaction to this situation: I avoid products that use DBs for smallish datasets because the DB blob doesn't dedup well, and that impacts me negatively for maintaining file-system level backups as well as for efficient sync between hosts. Sure, I could write a custom script that dumps the DB to a format that deltas better, but I'd really rather my filesystem level dedup and sync tools just work and not have to do something special-case for every application I use. (I'm currently going through this exact process with my media library -- it's a dozen megabyte database. It's so small loading the entire thing into RAM is easier than not; indexing it is beyond unnecessary, etc. And yet because it doesn't diff, every time I sync it between laptop and desktop, I'm irritated to discover I'm waiting for the entire thing to cross the network every single time.)

XorNot 12y ago
Agree with this. It's the current thing I am hating about every single music player application. There just isn't that much data to manage - why do they all insist on a binary blob for playlists and organization?
- cube00 12y ago
  Managing a playlist (sorting and searching multiple fields) is easier with some kind of DB layer. Usually those blobs are either MS Jet DB (MS Access) or SQLLite and can be opened for inspection/export. Unless of course of the blob is in a proprietary binary format in which case it's all about vendor lock in.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Some kind yes, but I'd prefer the index be transitive and the data confirmed against what's actually on the disk. Not to mention, those proprietary formats usually fail to sync to player devices automagically.
- frik 12y ago
  WinAmp, FooBar2000 (Plugins) and Windows Media Player (Win7) store the music metadata in the mp3 files itself (IDv2 format). Using the Windows search advanced syntax I can find all songs that I rated with >=4 stars. One can also add various metadata columns to Explorer details view (like album name, stars-rating, etc.). As playlist format use M3U or its unicode sibling - a format that every music player supports; avoid WPL or other lesser known/supported formats. It would be great if more music players like car entertainment systems, iTunes, iOS Music would show the stats rating that is stored in the mp3 files itself (metadata). Monolithic databased based music management systems may be convenient for some users. I personally prefer to copy the mp3 files (with embedded metadata) to my other devices. My wish list: More intelligent playlist playback that e.g. recognises song skipping as down-voting and manual replaying a song as up-voting and plays similar songs based on the music fingerprint like iTunes Genius but as completely offline feature. Casual people nowadays listen music on streaming platforms like Youtube, Spotify or old-school radio stations. So it's unfortunate but we saw no new exiting new features in music players for some years.
  - akx 12y ago
    Storing "post-fact" metadata such as ratings, etc. in the files themselves is a big no-no in my book, since the hashes, etc. of those files will now be changing. For the first ingestion of the data, be it from a CD or from the artist/label themselves, sure, that metadata can, and should, be stored in the files, but not your own.
    - quacker 12y ago
      > since the hashes, etc. of those files will now be changing. I'm having a hard time seeing hashes[1] being very valuable for much of anything regarding music library management. Hashes won't be any good for comparisons of music files containing the same song across different recording sessions, bit rates, or file formats. I would rather all of my music playing programs respect standard metadata formats (like ID3) - which is usually included in most digital downloads and which is supported across all the popular audio file formats - and leverage that metadata for organization. Off-hand, I can't think of a music organization system that relies on hashes that is not brittle. 1: I'm talking about "dumb" hashes like SHA-1. Fingerprinting can work well for this, but is more complicated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint

XorNot 12y ago

Agree with this. It's the current thing I am hating about every single music player application. There just isn't that much data to manage - why do they all insist on a binary blob for playlists and organization?

cube00 12y ago
Managing a playlist (sorting and searching multiple fields) is easier with some kind of DB layer. Usually those blobs are either MS Jet DB (MS Access) or SQLLite and can be opened for inspection/export. Unless of course of the blob is in a proprietary binary format in which case it's all about vendor lock in.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Some kind yes, but I'd prefer the index be transitive and the data confirmed against what's actually on the disk. Not to mention, those proprietary formats usually fail to sync to player devices automagically.
frik 12y ago
WinAmp, FooBar2000 (Plugins) and Windows Media Player (Win7) store the music metadata in the mp3 files itself (IDv2 format). Using the Windows search advanced syntax I can find all songs that I rated with >=4 stars. One can also add various metadata columns to Explorer details view (like album name, stars-rating, etc.). As playlist format use M3U or its unicode sibling - a format that every music player supports; avoid WPL or other lesser known/supported formats. It would be great if more music players like car entertainment systems, iTunes, iOS Music would show the stats rating that is stored in the mp3 files itself (metadata). Monolithic databased based music management systems may be convenient for some users. I personally prefer to copy the mp3 files (with embedded metadata) to my other devices. My wish list: More intelligent playlist playback that e.g. recognises song skipping as down-voting and manual replaying a song as up-voting and plays similar songs based on the music fingerprint like iTunes Genius but as completely offline feature. Casual people nowadays listen music on streaming platforms like Youtube, Spotify or old-school radio stations. So it's unfortunate but we saw no new exiting new features in music players for some years.
- akx 12y ago
  Storing "post-fact" metadata such as ratings, etc. in the files themselves is a big no-no in my book, since the hashes, etc. of those files will now be changing. For the first ingestion of the data, be it from a CD or from the artist/label themselves, sure, that metadata can, and should, be stored in the files, but not your own.
  - quacker 12y ago
    > since the hashes, etc. of those files will now be changing. I'm having a hard time seeing hashes[1] being very valuable for much of anything regarding music library management. Hashes won't be any good for comparisons of music files containing the same song across different recording sessions, bit rates, or file formats. I would rather all of my music playing programs respect standard metadata formats (like ID3) - which is usually included in most digital downloads and which is supported across all the popular audio file formats - and leverage that metadata for organization. Off-hand, I can't think of a music organization system that relies on hashes that is not brittle. 1: I'm talking about "dumb" hashes like SHA-1. Fingerprinting can work well for this, but is more complicated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint