peter nelson — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:41:43 GMT

Another consideration on this topic is that different genres may imply different browsing strategies. The main organizing concept in classical music is the ‘work’ – i.e., the opus, the piece, e.g., a piano trio, a symphony, a concerto., etc. And the work is subdivided into individual movments, which correspond to tracks. So in classical music there is an extra layer in the hierarchy that doesn’t typically exist in other music.

When I’m browsing my classical music I may go COMPOSER (e.g., Beethoven) > WORK (e.g., “Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125”) > MOVEMENT (“2nd movement – Molto vivace”)

When I’m browsing popular music I go ARTIST (e.g., “Moby”) > SONG (e.g., “South Side”)

But in jazz I might focus on certain classic albums. e.g. ARTIST (“Miles Davis”) > ALBUM (e.g. “Sketches of Spain”) and play the whole thing.

Any good IA for music has to account for different genres having different organizational and searching paradigms.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by peter nelson