ClassicalDB

ClassicalDB is a crowd-sourced classical music metadata platform under active development. Our goal is to capture all metadata relevant to classical music, and expose it as an easy to use API for other application developers.

ClassicalDB consists of 2 major components:

1. A Crowd-sourceed injest/digest system that allows classical music aficionados to contribute metadata, and improve the quality and accuracy of existing data.

2. A well-defined, easy to use API that other applications can use for retrieving classical music metadata.

Use Cases

Here are some example queries that ClassicalDB will accomodate that existing music metadata services cannot:

1. Find all recordings of the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.

2. Find all the different masterings of a single recording (a given recording may be mastered in numerous ways and released by different labels).

3. Find all recordings of Chopin's Military Polonaise by second generation students of Liszt.

By enabling these types of queries, ClassicalDB will enable a new generation of classical music applications like streaming services, library management/tagging apps, and relationship data visualization tools.

Technology Stack

ClassicalDB is built with full-stack JavaScript:

• Node.js and Express.js handle the API interface and serving the JS SPA.

• Front-end client is a Single Page App (SPA) built using React.js and Flux architecture

• Music metadata is stored in PostgreSQL database and modeled using Sequelize ORM

• Authentication is handled by a MongoDB database and modeled using Mongoose ODM

• Back-End Testing uses Mocha, Chai, Superagent

• Front-End Testing uses Jest and Mocha

• Continuous Integration Testing is done through CircleCI

• Code Coverage Testing is done through Istanbul and Coveralls

• Deployment and Build scripts use Gulp and Browserify

• Hosting is done through Heroku

Roadmap

Version 0.1 - Labels and CDs

Site:

• Basic design mockup in Photoshop with "Contribute Data" and "Explore Data" site sections
• User can enter new Label and CD data via website
• User can view list of all Labels (and edit individual entries)
• User can view list of all CDs (and edit individual entries)
• No user authentication yet (and therefore no Mongo/Mongoose functionality)

API:

• define and document basic interface for labels and CDs
• developer can perform CRUD operations on labels and CDs
• create "API Status" endpoints

Schema:

Future Versions:

Schema:

The following schema will support all relevant metadata for albums that contain single-instrument and single-performer works that may be standalone pieces or multi-movement works (like Sonatas):

Schema Details (Google Sheets)

Known Issues

• add license information