Priorities for metadata items

There are cases where different flavours of essentially “the same” data apply to a musical work, a musician, a recording or a Release. The name of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, for example, can be provided in Russian as Дмитрий Шостакович, in German as Dmitri Schostakowitsch, in French as Dmitri Chostakovitch and in Punjabi as ਦਿਮਿਤਰੀ ਦਿਮਿਤਰੀਏਵਿਚ ਸ਼ੋਸਤਾਕੋਵਿਚ.

DDEX standards allow the communication of multiple flavours of “the same” data not only for names but also for titles and many other aspects.

It is possible to accompany such information by a tag that indicates which language and script has been used: 

<FullName LanguageAndScriptCode=”en”>Dmitri Shostakovich</FullName>
<FullName LanguageAndScriptCode=”ru”>Дмитрий Шостакович</FullName>
<FullName LanguageAndScriptCode=”de”>Dmitri Schostakowitsch</FullName>
<FullName LanguageAndScriptCode=”fr”>Dmitri Chostakovitch</FullName>
<FullName LanguageAndScriptCode=”pa”>ਦਿਮਿਤਰੀ ਦਿਮਿਤਰੀਏਵਿਚ ਸ਼ੋਸਤਾਕੋਵਿਚ</FullName>

The same may apply to territory information. The British band Suede was known in the US as The London Suede:

<DisplayArtistName LanguageAndScriptCode=”en”
                   ApplicableTerritoryCode=”GB”>Suede</DisplayArtistName>
<DisplayArtistName LanguageAndScriptCode=”en” 
                   ApplicableTerritoryCode=”US”>The London Suede</DisplayArtistName>

In some cases, a message sender may wish to convey that it would prefer the message recipient to use one of the provided flavours over the other flavours provided. This is especially important for Release Deliveries where record companies wish to achieve consistency of how their content is shown to consumers across multiple DSPs – notwithstanding such DSPs own display policies.

ERN-4

ERN-4 allows signalling the default flavour by including the IsDefault flag set to true (while it is possible to set this flag for all other flavours to false, this is not necessary): 

<CourtesyLine LanguageAndScriptCode=”en” IsDefault=”true”>
     Billy on the Piano
</CourtesyLine>
<CourtesyLine LanguageAndScriptCode=”de”>
     Billy am Klavier
</CourtesyLine>

The above XML means that the message sender would prefer that the English courtesy line is used everywhere. However, a DSP serving customers in Germany, Austria or Switzerland – or indeed a consumer in the UK who chose German as his or her primary language – may prefer to use the German text instead.

ERN-3 

ERN-3 does not have the IsDefault flag described above. In that case the only way to signal a preference is to order the tags in the message. Message senders should be aware, however, that there is no guarantee that the recipient will be able to honour such a wish.

Wherever the XML Schema provides a SequenceNumber element or attribute, this SequenceNumber provides the only means to indicate an order.