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Song classification and other technicalities

Topic started by Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on Wed Jun 10 19:34:37 EDT 1998.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Hi!

I have a strange problem now, or rather two problems, I should say.

1) you might be aware that I have a homepage hosting about 150 songs, mostly compositions of IR set to carnatic ragas. Now that I have received a biiiig load of cassettes, from which I might be uploading at least 75-100 songs (mostly songs of mottai) a new problem arises. Till now I have had just three pages, one for Classical Ilaiyaraja, one for Rare Ragas of IR and the third page for the non-classical compositions (or songs which cannot be defined as any particular raga/scale) The pages already have upto 40 songs each, and I feel the listings are getting rather big.

Hence my question :

Would you suggest any new classification scheme for all the songs?
a) Songs listed by the raga name (Abheri, Atana, Bairavi.... and so on)
b) Songs listed by the melakarta raga (and their derivatives) - starting with melakarta raga 1 and its derivatives etc. (Might be a bit confusing for beginners to carnatic music)
c) Songs sorted by the 1st line (might be ambiguous for some songs?)
d) Songs sorted by film name (some of the films have only one song listed in my collection)
e) Songs sorted by the year in which the respective film got released (this info might be a bit difficult to gather :-( )

Of course, once this sorting order is finalised, I might have to split the entire list into smaller pages. I want to maintain the carnatic based songs separate from others, as that was my original aim in creating this page.

I can certainly have a central repository of all songs, and replicate the links under various classifications, so that a song may appear simultaneously under various classifications, but then I am afraid this might become too difficult to manage. I would appreciate any tips and suggestions from the TFM fans out there.

2) My second question is rather trivial. I have noticed that there are some sites out there which have been setting links to the songs in my collection directly (I prefer not to name those sites :-) ). Though this doesnt bother me directly, what irks me is that some of these sites are of commercial nature and they are using the songs in my collection for luring more visitors. And the last straw is that they dont even bother to acknowledge the source of the song etc. I feel rather dejected to see the amount of work I have put in to upload the songs, and the amount of server space I have managed to acquire being exploited by others. Of course, some of them have a better interface (Java, CGI scripts etc.) that enable easier surfing, but I feel it is unfair to exploit services like ours. (I am sure Chandra Gobichetipal, Neethan Namchivayam and others also feel the same way). What do you feel about this in general?

The worst thing I could do would be to shut down the site, or add my voice to each song, announcing where the song comes from etc. but I would hate myself later for taking either of those steps. Or is anybody aware of a better technical solution (using a real audio server, using some CGI script to screen the referring URL etc.) that might curtail the commercial exploitation of my services?

Thanks for any response/advice. TFM admins, if you feel that this topic does not fit in the DF, pl. feel free to ask posters to this thread to mail me directly.

Thanks and regards

G.Ramaswamy

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Responses:

• From: Karthik (@ pacers.cnel.ufl.edu) on: Thu Jun 11 00:41:53 EDT 1998
  
  For the second problem, you could keep your songs in a password protected directory, and then display the password prominently on your frontpage. That way, people *have* to visit your page to listen to the songs. And of course, you've to change the password regularly.
  
  
  
• From: Bharat (@ dsi.mids.com) on: Thu Jun 11 11:16:35 EDT 1998
  
  I don't know if this will help, but here goes... My own casstette collection was getting extremely unwieldy. Every time, I'd request a bunch of songs to be recorded from home, only to discover that I have some of those songs already. So I now maintain a listing by film name ( I can send it to you if you like, just to see how it looks).
  
  Cross-indexing is always a problem. I think sorting by year is a little confusing, and first lines of songs are often the same.
  
  You wish to have a listing not only of the songs, but also their raagams. A lot of times, you find that it's better to focus on one aspect. Your site has a USP, and that is "Ilayaraja's Carnatic-based songs". This is totally unique. IMHHHHO, I think you should have a raagam-based classification. That makes your site stand apart from the dozens of song-sites on the net. It also gives it clarity.
  
  I hope that didn't end up sounding terribly pedantic, but I've done sites for people and companies and found that the leaner the focus, the better the site. Hope this helps.
  
  
• From: Srikanth (@ 161.225.48.3) on: Thu Jun 11 12:47:25 EDT 1998
  
  Hi,
  
  I had the same problem, I have a tons of raja songs - a ton of MSV/AR/ETC....
  but instead of uploading all the songs , I have started to provide songs in a program like format - eg: Raja classics - this will go on every month...
  
  Similary you can come up new program slots...
  instead of putting all the songs at a go..
  Like a juke box....
  
  Srikanth
  
  
• From: Ravi (@ greed.cs.umass.edu) on: Thu Jun 11 12:56:44 EDT 1998
  
  GR: One suggestion for your point 2. You could use HTTP_REFERER envt. variable and write simple scripts to limit access to your page. I am playing around with another feature in the apache server.. but I am not sure whether your site uses apache or not. If you are interested write to me and I'll give more details.
  As you suggested point 2 is unrelated to TFM and further discussions should be preferably carried on off-line. You can then come back and post the final soln. you adopted for the benefit of other site maintainers. Point 1 is related to TFM as far as I can tell. :).
  
  
• From: Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on: Thu Jun 11 19:16:10 EDT 1998
  
  Karthik :
  I think your idea is good, but for surfers who want to use the non-stop play facility, it might be too irritating, if they have to type the password for each song. But if nothing else works, I guess this is the only way out.
  
  Bharat:
  I didnt know till now that each site has to have a central theme, which makes it attractive. I guess I should quit trying to make my site all-in-one and instead concentrate on Classical Ilaiyaraja. Thanks for the suggestion. But what am I going to do with all those non-classical based songs of mottai and songs of other MDs? :-)
  
  Srikanth : your idea would be not very viable in my case, I am afraid I wouldnt have the time to invest in modifying the online content on a regular basis. In fact some of the sites out there which use my songs are so refined that visitors just send a mail to inform about any links that do not work, and the link gets removed/updated ;-) I think my solution should be more technically oriented. Anyway thanks for the suggestion.
  
  Ravi : I AM using Apache. As you suggested, I will get in touch with you directly for the 2nd problem. Meanwhile other TFMers are welcome to suggest other classification schemes. I am thinking of a Java based query window (sort of) that fetches all songs that match certain criteria, of course you wouldnt have the click and play ease of use that the pages have now ...
  
  Thanks and regards
  
  G.Ramaswamy
  
  
• From: Srikanth (@ 113.minneapolis-06.mn.dial-access.att.net) on: Sun Jun 14 14:13:54 EDT 1998
  
  HI ,
  This question to our TFM Admin RAVI
  My links are stolen, Meaning sites like Mail-Bag form a huge list of songs and just put links directly to my real audio metafile (.Ram).
  I want people to visit my page and enjoy music , instead of a direct link from a commercial page.
  Is there any way I can restrict this. I spend lot of time in maintaining my site for recording and getting the tapes from India etc..- but at the end these guys put a direct link to the .RAM metafile in my site. They get thier advertisment in thier site saying they have the most number of songs. Force people to visit thier site but pick up my song link...I call this as a link Theft!,
  Please help me - is there any way I can control this.....
  Srikanth
  
  
• From: vijay (@ 129.252.29.219) on: Mon Jun 15 00:39:11 EDT 1998
  
  ramaswamy gireesan,
  is it a good idea to classify the songs based on which time period it came in.I always like to group songs in that way in my cassettes.i might sound a bit selfish or greedy but that is the way i always like to listen to songs.after listening to a TMS song i can't listen to 'oh! butterfly' though both of them might be good songs.u can group the songs in ten year periods since u seem to have a good balance in terms of which decade the song is from .
  
  
• From: vijay (@ 129.252.29.219) on: Mon Jun 15 00:44:12 EDT 1998
  
  hi,
  this is just to acknowledge the great work done
  by srikanth,gireesan,gopal,MPR and others.
  
  all of us understand the problems that u face and i for sure am suprised at your motivation to do all these things which i lack.Irrespective of all those link thefts that are going one,i'll keep visiting your sites and i have already informed a bunch of guys about your sites.keep up the good work!
  
  
• From: Ramaswamy Gireesan (@ m42.m59.big.ac.at) on: Mon Jun 15 01:33:16 EDT 1998
  
  Vijay :
  
  You have a point there, but then this might not work always. 'madhana mOha rUpa sundhari' might belong to the 50s/60s songs, even though it came out in the 80s. I think if the songs are classified acco. to MDs or acc. to the singers, it might be more meaningful. I will soon post my suggestion for a classification scheme and you can suggest corrections.
  
  Thanks and regards
  
  G.Ramaswamy
  
  
• From: Sathiya Keerthi (@ panorama.nus.edu.sg) on: Mon Jun 15 03:23:52 EDT 1998
  
  Ramaswamy G:
  
  First, thanks for the nice work that you have been doing in
  your homepage. (Same comment goes to Srikanth, too.)
  
  Here are some of my suggestions.
  
  1. The best way would be to have a tree structure. At the highest
  level can be MDs. Your highest level options in the current set-up
  looks OK to me. (Of course, in the "Other MDs" section, if there
  are too many songs by a single MD, say MSV, then you can put that
  under a separate heading.) Then, within one branch, say "Classical
  Songs of IR", you can put the listing according to year groups,
  say "1975-80", "1981-85" etc. The following link contains full,
  up-to-date info on ALL Tamil movies released, by the year.
  
  http://www.tamilcinema.com/Permanent/old_pcit/index.htm
  
  2. A key element of your homepage is Carnatic music. So, it would
  be nice to put, in the main page, links to: (a) a primer on Carnatic
  music, such as P.Sriram's article -- the aim is to help the beginners--
  you can also add a sentence or two to say that learning a bit of essential
  carnatic background, such as raagaa classifications, can be easily achieved;
  (b) a pointer to Kumaran Santhanam's detailed list of Carnatic raagaas
  and their associated "keys"; (c) a pointer to the newtfmpage list of
  TFM songs made in Carnatic Raagaas; (d) the "Raagaa" permanent
  thread of TFM-DF; and (e) links to some good pages on "serious" Carnatic music.
  
  3. For each song, you have a column for the raagaa, and the raagaa
  name is a link. Currently you have set-up this link to be a ram file
  where a song in the raagaa is played. Instead, what could be done
  is the following. When the raagaa name is clicked, it leads to a page
  for that raagaa where you get info such as: the "key" notation for
  that raagaa, a list of TFM/other songs in that raagaa, other comments
  such as... this raagaa's qualities, it is close to that other raagaa,
  some interesting comments such as "IR is the only one to have used
  this in FM" etc. In fact you can even pull-in "cut&pasted" excerpts
  from Srirangam Ramakrishnan's "Classical Ilayaraja" articles. In fact
  if only you could add comments on the properties of that raagaa and
  its distinctive features etc, that would be great. Of course, all
  songs in that raagaa should be made as links from this page.
  
  I know that this means a lot of work for you. But, it is worth it,
  and you can do it slowly as you get free time. Your homepage is not only
  be a source of enjoyment, but also a place where people discover
  new things about the technicalities of music.
  
  
• From: Sathiya Keerthi (@ synergy.nus.edu.sg) on: Mon Jun 15 05:49:52 EDT 1998
  
  Ramaswamy G:
  
  Some corrections in your page:
  
  Pallandu Vazhga - MD is KVM, not MSV.
  Parthiban Kanavu - MD is Vedha.
  Ambikapathy song is vaadaamalarE thamizh thEnE.
  mullaimalar mElE song is TMS-PS, not TMS-Jikki.
  thendral uRangiya pOdhum is in the movie,
  Petra Maganai Vitra Annai.
  Missiamma - MD is S.Rajeshwar Rao.
  vaadikkai maRandhadhum EnO is from Kalayana Parisu
  
  

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