In effect, it is like having another album by each of them. The same is true for different jazz performances – each is clustered under an album.

Perhaps one way to go would be to have a “virtual album” for each month or quarter or year, depending on how often you expect to revise tracks. You can then identify each song by its name and the time period it appeared in. If you do several mixes over a short period, you could always append a suitable descriptor to each song name (eg. “Jennifer’s Song – handrum mix”, “Jennifer’s Song – multivox mix”).

Another approach might be to name every song including year, month, date and even hour and minute to pinpoint when you decided it was ready for others to hear (eg. my_song.2009112813.mp3). Period based directories would still form a way of organising these into virtual albums for the purpose of doing things like tracking who is playing what.

Wulf

Yes. I already plan for each song to have a homepage on my own site, and the homepage link to be included in the file – so that would be a natural home for versioning info (not reliant on Soundcloud).

On the other hand, reading your comment I’m also thinking the music file itself could perhaps include a comments field for documentation of previous releases of the same song. It could certainly include a suggestion to check the home page for later releases.

On the other other hand… the problem I’m least feeling I have a solution for isn’t deciding what to embed – it’s where to embed it so that the average user (a) realises it’s there and (b) can easily access it while listening.

Oh OK, I withdraw that label then. (No offence intended to any of the musicians!) But I still think that the term “rough mix” implies some connotation of <1.0 status.

I haven’t thrown either set out in favour of only listening to the “hardware” release.

::perks up at the sound of a possible data point::

Have you ever stored both at once on an MP3 player or in music-file management software, and if so, how did they show up different? Or have you only played the hardware copy on hardware so far?

how about the world of jazz?

Hmm yeah, another useful comparison.

You can however clearly define which version you are talking about – for a track name, the date would be enough given other ways of finding out details like where and who.

Yes. So then my question would be how in practice those tracks are tagged, when they appear as digital files. (I can imagine, for instance, two tracks with the same name but different album artwork.) Got an example?

Modern recorded music is a lot like software. You take various elements, all on different tracks, and cut and fade between them – sometimes adding effects to a single track or to the whole thing.

You need a way to keep pace with all those different versions. Something like SVN, CVS, GIT. I’m sure there’s dedicated musical software.

That way, you can release the “source code” to your music.

Imagine, if you will, that you could download The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper in multi-track format. You could replace the horn section that you never liked with some saxophone. Because you’ve got the isolated vocals – before they’re mixed – you could sing in harmony with Paul, cutting John out of the equation. Don’t like the echo effect? Uncheck a button and / or replace it with something else.

In your own music, you could take the vocal track from take one, the bass from take 27 and use the drums from an entirely different song. As long as you’ve versioned them all correctly.

Open Source Music – versions, branched, forked, remixed. Could be very interesting.

Maybe that is where the beta idea could work – tunes which are put up as works in progress but with no promise of being maintained forever. In contrast, a tune might have several “release” versions which form the artists discography and those would be kept available as long as possible.

The latter would be what we are used to, particularly in genres like jazz. The former is more like what you would get if the musician in question were a local friend of yours and you sometimes popped by for a cup of tea and got to hear what they were practising.

Moving away from those examples, how about the world of jazz? That is a genre which prides itself on constantly refining and redefining tunes and solos. Even an artists own works will vary from recording to recording – if I wanted to tell you what I’d been listening to specifically I’d have to tell you something like “Ron Carter’s version of Autumn Leaves from his 1973 Village West recording”. Whether that is better or worse than any other recordings of the track, by Carter or other artists, is a matter for debate. You can however clearly define which version you are talking about – for a track name, the date would be enough given other ways of finding out details like where and who.

This would both allow people to listen to tracks as they are being developed but also to go back and listen to earlier versions of their favourite tracks.