RiC / MCN – The advanced magic of semantic web data aka Music Experienced

In the last post we already have explained how the new artist page is set up in general. We also had a brief look on the Template:Definitions which enables semantic linking to other web databases and thereby includes RiC and MCN in the world-wide Open Linked Data Cloud. Apart from that particular template and the general Form for new artists there are a number of magic spells that can be woven to make our system even more fantastic!

Above is a snapshot from our semantic data project page showing two template codes that can be used on various pages in the system.

The first one is used to manually add music videos to e.g. Artist pages, Record Pages, Song pages, Opera pages, etc. etc. in addition to the Youtube ID that should have been already entered in the respective page form. Everytime a YOUTUBE ID is entered in such a way, a property (Hasvideo) is set that links the page with the youtube video and makes it available in our system to be called upon from any other page. For more on video at RiC / MCN, please have a look at our article on how to add videos.

The second template called Template:FreeDownload is used to refer any page, e.g. ARTIST, RECORD, SONG, etc. with an URL that either contains a MP3 file or that contains some kind of method to download legal and free music (e.g. imusicbox.hk). Once again, with every used template for a download, the URL is being attributed to the property (mo:free_download) and can be used throughout the whole system, e.g. on our Downloads page in the Songs section. If you “edit” that section you see the actual called upon code:

{| class="wikitable" border=1 cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="80%"
!Artist Image
!Artist Name
!Free Download Link (either MP3 or URL)
|-
{{#ask: [[Category:Artists]] [[mo:free_download::+]]
|?Image
|?mo:free_download
|mainlabel=Artist
|format=template
|template=ShowDownloadTable
}}
|}

With that magic word “ask” and the query behind that every free download within our system and linked on an Artist page can be called upon.

Next up in our spell book is the Template:ArticleinPage which is very close to Template:Booksinpage. It basically crawls through the Category:Articles and searchs for any article or blog entry or journal article or scientific paper that has been tagged with the name of the page on which this template is mentioned. E.g. on Carsick Cars it will find two articles:

• Pete DeMola (2010), At That Moment I Thought, I Thought I Really Saw Music, published on 20 July 2010
• Alex Hoban (2009), Turning Japanese heads to China: The Shanghai scene, published on 4 August 2009

and include them at the place of the template. Hence no more copy & past for interview articles, just one entry with the Form:Add a New Article and voila, the article will appear on the band page.

Next on the list of magic spells is the semantic definition foaf:made:: within the Discography section:

== Discography ==
=== Albums ===
<gallery>
Image:xxx|[[Foaf:made::Title (Artist)|Title]] - Year
</gallery>

When entering an album on the page of a band (still needs to be done manually), then one has to include the prefix Foaf:made:: before the actual title, e.g. [[foaf:made::You Can Listen, You Can Talk (Carsick Cars)|You Can Listen, You Can Talk]] as shown in

Image:CSC-YCLYCT.jpg|[[foaf:made::You Can Listen, You Can Talk (Carsick Cars)|You Can Listen, You Can Talk]] – 2009, June

That way we will be able to recognize which record belongs to a band. For sure a similar reference is being set on a record page but as there will always be more band pages than record pages, this way no information is lost. Surplus we use this method to be able to find RECORD pages based on properties set on ARTIST pages. Think, all records from metal bands formed in 1999.

Summing up: There are a lot of templates available (with most of them being explained on our semantic approach project page) that not only add value to an individual page, but also to the whole system and other pages. Last but not least, by using the templates and magic words additional properties are set for individual pages. Properties that can be exported via RDF (see example RDF export for Carsick Cars) and re-used in other pages.