Browsing Musicbrainz’s dataset via URI dereferencing

Frederick Giasson

Musicbrainz’s dataset can finally be browsed, node-by-node, using URI dereferencing.

What this mean?

Since the Musicbrainz relational database has been converted into RDF using the Music Ontology, all relations existing between Musicbrainz entities (an entity can be a Music Artist, a Band, an Album, a Track, etc.) are creating a musical relations graph. Each node of the graph is a resource and each arc is a property between two resources. Welcome in the World of RDF.

madonna-rdf-description.jpg

This means that from a resource “Madonna” we can browse the musical relations graph to find other entities such as Records, People, Bands, Etc.

Kingsley, inspired by Diana Ross, said: “URI Everything, and Everything is Cool!”

This is cool! Now Diana Ross has her own URI on the semantic web: http://zitgist.com/music/artist/60d41417-feda-4734-bbbf-7dcc30e08a83

Paul McCarney:
http://zitgist.com/music/artist/ba550d0e-adac-4864-b88b-407cab5e76af

The Beatles:
http://zitgist.com/music/artist/b10bbbfc-cf9e-42e0-be17-e2c3e1d2600d

Madonna:
http://zitgist.com/music/artist/79239441-bfd5-4981-a70c-55c3f15c1287

Have their own too!


URIs for Musical Things

These URIs are not only used to refer to Musicbrainz entities. In fact, these URIs are used to refer to any Musical Entities that you can describe using the Music Ontology. In a near future, the Musicbrainz data will be integrated along with data from Jamendo and Magnatune. In the future, we will be able to integrate any sort of musical data at the same place (radio stations data, user foaf profiles relations to musical things, etc.). So from a single source (http://zitgist.com/music/) all these different sources of musical data will be queriable at once.

mbz-magnatune-jemendo-rdf.jpg

URI schemes

The URI schemes are defined in the Musicbrainz Virtuoso RDF View:

  • http://zitgist.com/music/artist/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/artist/birth/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/artist/death/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/artist/simlink/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/record/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/performance/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/composition/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/musicalwork/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/sound/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/recording/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/signal/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/track/*******
  • http://zitgist.com/music/track/duration/*******

All these URI schemes terms refer to their Music Ontology classes’ descriptions.

Conclusion

I am getting closer and closer to the first goal I set to myself when I first started to write the Music Ontology. This first goal was to make the Musicbrainz relational database available in RDF on the Web. Months later and with the help of the Music Ontology Community (specially Yves Raimond that worked tirelessly on the project) and the OpenLink Software Inc. Team, we finally make this data available through URI dereferencing.

From there, we will build-up new music services, integrate more musical datasets into the Music Data Space, etc. It is just the beginning of something much bigger.