Hacking the iTunes Music Library
Library
Niel Bornstein, XML 2004
Conference Proceedings
“Apple’s iTunes
uses XML to store library metadata. What can we do
with
this information? This paper will
explore ways to work with the iTunes
Music
Library file for fun and education, including querying
various
web services for other suggested
recordings and related information.
The
iTunes library file, a file called iTunes Music Library.xml,
is
created automatically when you launch
iTunes. The schema for the library
has
nothing to do with music, audio, multimedia, or data files;
it’s
just a generic dictionary, a collection
of key-value pairs. The top-
level element is
plist (property list), and it can contain any of
the
elements array, data, date, dict, real,
integer, string, true, or false.
This is a
fairly flexible DTD. Apple provides a browser-based
service
that allows you to look up a
particular song or artist in the iTunes
Music
Store. The ITMS Link Maker allows you to search for a song,
album,
or artists, and creates a link to
direct the iTunes music player to the
song in
the music store. This could be useful if, for example,
you
publish a list of recently played songs
on your weblog, and you want
to let your
readers buy the songs you’ve recently listened to.
Apple
also provides a service to create an
RSS feed of iTunes songs based on
criteria
you select, including genre, regional music store, feed
type
(new releases, just added, iTunes top
songs, iTunes top albums, or
featured albums
and exclusives), feed size, and whether to show
explicit
content.
http://www.idealliance.org/proceedings/xml04/papers/80/paper.html
See
also XML and Music:
http://xml.coverpages.org/xmlMusic.html“
(Quoted
from the XML.org Daily Newslink)
Revisions:
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January 5th, 2005 by alephnaught