Re: candidate keys in abstract parent relations

paul c wrote:
> Yes, and not always one on each side, some 45's had only one song.

Yeah. Flexi-discs were commonly single-sided, for example. Ah, flexi-discs. I miss the flexi-disc of whale songs that came bound into an issue of National Geographic I got when I was 5 or so.

> Haven't bought (nor stolen) a song for years, but I seem to remember
> that there have been CD's that have only one 'piece' on them.

If you listen to experimental or avant-garde music (or audiobooks), it's not uncommon to have 70+ minute CDs with single tracks. Also, a lot of DJ mixes are distributed as un-indexed collections, because it's nearly impossible to figure out where one track stops and the next one starts.

> On the topics of standards, they're useful if one can make them stick
> but lots of times they don't. Then there are big problems coping with
> an unreliable 'master'.

Yes. This is a big problem with music. Even people who make their livings from music are forced to use unreliable "masters" like Muze and the All-Music Guide to look up metainformation. Basically, making and releasing music is easy, demand is high, and the consequences for not accurately registering the metadata with an authoritative repository are negligible (especially because the vast majority of musicians make very little money for their efforts).

> I have
> bought CD's from club musicians and I doubt whether there is any central
> record of them. Do the 'indie' labels adhere to all the RIAA bumpf?

It's harder to get a glass master made of a CD without obtaining ISRCs than it is to just go ahead and request them, as most pressing plants don't want to deal with bootlegs and insist that tracks be cleared before they'll press CDs, especially in an age with a feral RIAA on the loose. Most indies have distribution agreements that require them to get ISRCs as part of the distribution deal. (here's a super-indie that does because their business is based on digital downloads: http://www.cdbaby.com/, and CDBaby does obtain ISRCs for all of the tracks it distributes: http://cdbaby.org/stories/03/10/06/2534677.html)

The big exception is the rise of the CD-R. Some CD-Rs are self-released, some are released as tiny editions by boutique labels, but most of them exist in legal limbo. In other words, if you're a musician releasing your albums via an indie label, you'll periodically get derisory royalty checks from one of the big publishing organizations; if you're releasing via a CD-R label, the only money you'll ever see is whatever the label pays you. Received on Sat Jan 21 2006 - 00:30:32 CET