About six weeks ago, Paul Stix, the fine proprietor and operator of MashStix.com, approached me about writing an article regarding the proper labeling of MP3 mashup files. Little did he know that I'm a software developer by profession, and I've reviewed and created my share of programming guidelines, so this was right up my alley. The only difference was that I now had the opportunity to add a little creative flair to this somewhat dry subject matter.
Every good article requires research, so I turned to Internet articles, blogs, and other ramblings for some initial insight to the dilemma. Besides the huge collection of MP3 mashup files I've come across in the past few years, which provided a good range of poor examples and excellent examples, I reviewed the music filenames found in P2P or torrent downloads to get a good idea of how other people were naming their music files. I also looked into how a few active DJ's named and organized their own digital music files for some insight into how other industry professionals, who needed to access their music quickly on a regular basis, were naming their music files.
The approach to the article was not to create a standard in an already established industry, but to provide a guideline that shows music/mashup producers the benefits of intelligently naming their music MP3 files and completing the ID3 tags, and conversely, showing the downfalls if they don't spend a little extra time doing so.
The result of this research is the ultimate and comprehensive Guide to Labeling Your Mashups, which can be found at MashStix.com.
