IMDB: No in 1.5.
Ok, after investigation, I can say that, short of a miracle, this sentence will never end, and, also, we aren't going to get IMDB in 1.5.
Why not? Well, turns out:
Ouch! Ok, but maybe that's worth it, but...
Ok, we have to set up our OWN web site to dole out the content to our users. Maybe I can do that, although that would be hard to do in the next month before 1.5. But what's this?
Uh, yah. If I'm spending $10,000 a year, I'm thinking I'd like for my users to be able to get data on ALL their movies. I'm not even sure how they divide up the data.
So, we're going to start negotiations with them, but I am NOT promising anything.
We're going to investigate Library of Congress, but I think Amazon has already sucked a bunch of data from them (or used the same source they do), so I'm not sure it'll make things richer. (The books I tested had the EXACT same description text on LoC and Amazon; although, now that I think about it, I think it was provided by the publisher.)
Why not? Well, turns out:
[http://imdb.com/help/licensing/contact]
We offer licensing packages that start at US$10,000 per year.
Ouch! Ok, but maybe that's worth it, but...
[http://imdb.com/Licensing/FAQ.html]
Q: How will the data be transferred?
A:While we are flexible, we supply the majority of our partners with XML data files, retrievable at an ftp site.
Ok, we have to set up our OWN web site to dole out the content to our users. Maybe I can do that, although that would be hard to do in the next month before 1.5. But what's this?
Q: Do you license the entire IMDb?
A: We will not license the entire database, though hundreds of thousands of titles is over-kill for most uses.
Uh, yah. If I'm spending $10,000 a year, I'm thinking I'd like for my users to be able to get data on ALL their movies. I'm not even sure how they divide up the data.
So, we're going to start negotiations with them, but I am NOT promising anything.
We're going to investigate Library of Congress, but I think Amazon has already sucked a bunch of data from them (or used the same source they do), so I'm not sure it'll make things richer. (The books I tested had the EXACT same description text on LoC and Amazon; although, now that I think about it, I think it was provided by the publisher.)
posted by Wil Shipley at 3:36 PM
18 Comments:
Wil,
Supporting the Library of Congress sounds like a great idea. I'd be very surprised if there's any info at all the IMDB has, that the LoC doesn't.
One other thing that occurs to me: the CDDB started out with a bunch of people who used a particular CD player app filling out the track/artist/whatever info, and uploading it to central server. They started slowly, but now they're *the* CDDB.
I don't know how many users you have yet, (A LOT, I'm sure), but there will come a point where you could have people competing to find the most obscure titles they can, just so they can be the first to upload the catalog info.
Just a thought,
-jcr
JCR has an interesting point, but we shouldn't forget what happened in the Gracenote debacle -- when a private company was formed to monetize CDDB assets. Who really owns the information: the millions who typed in track listings, the company who hosts the server and pays the bandwidth bills, or perhaps the record companys who own the copyrights to the albums?
Having said that, it would be neat to try and leverage all the work that DL users are doing individually across the user base. I know I've input info for a whole load of Swedish books that at least four or five people in the world have as well. :)
--Peter L
I actually emailed them the same suggestion last week. Unfortunately, their mailbox was full and it (along with some other suggestions/bug reports) got bounced back. I emailed main support to let me know when that problem had been fixed, but so far I've heard nothing yet. It seems as if the Blog is the only way to get ahold of them right now (cough, cough).
Since you're discussing future features, I thought I would add my 2 crowns ...
I don't use DL currently, as a result of three things. First, I think I need a better computer, since running the demo of 1.0 was a pain with my 800 MHz iMac G4 :). Thats' not your problem though.
Second, I'm in Sweden (like Peter up there), and most of my CDs and DVDs are bought here, meaning that Amazon lookups will never work for me until they open a store here (sometime in 2050, perhaps). Many of my books are english, though, so that works, but I wasn't that impressed with the results. Maybe I'm too pedantic or something, but there was always at least one thing I had to change in the data. Like Peter says, having a user-contributed database would be golden. I could live with writing a few entries myself if I got ten-fold back from other contributors. Some sort of wiki structure would be good, too (or some solution to make users improve and edit entries themselves, maybe doing it all through DL). I'm sure it's impossibly complicated, but I'm rooting for you anyway! Like I read elsewhere in a review of DL: "Delicious Monster should go peer-to-peer on this sucker!"
Okay, third thing. Actually, the lion's part of my collections isn't books, movies or music, it's comics. Thousands of them, mostly american. Once I had them all in a database, but that fell by the wayside, and now I don't have time for that. I'd love to catalogue them thoroughly using an app such as DL, that downloads all the data for me. Amazon, however, doesn't carry any comics except for collections. However, there is an initiative called the Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org), which is now building a database of pretty much everything based on data from free contributers. I'd love for you to (a) add a "Comics" entry to the main Library pane and (b) include support for downloading data from GCD. Take it from me: the few database programs that exist for the Mac leave something to be desired. If GCD seems complicated, there are paid-for services that can be explored.
Anyway, these are the services that would make DL worthwhile for me. If I work on the first one, will you work on the other two? :)
Best wishes,
-Jonas G., Uppsala, Sweden
I concur with the multinational point - a good chunk of stuff of mine that I didn't realise was "euro-cised" is coming up blank. Boring.
But I really wanted to mention allmusic.com. Those guys have some cool stuff. I wondered about investing in them a few years ago - I thought their "relate stuff to other stuff" technology was way ahead of anything that Amazon cobbled together since it seemed to be part of the service rather than an addon. Like a song, fancy something a bit more loud? Just click the "louder" link. Very touchy-feely. They must have (if they've "managed it right") a huge database of suggestions if I gave them my music collection, which is presumably a huge commercial proposition.
So I tell DL what I like, it tells me what other stuff I should buy - right? that seems good. Hey - and now I trust DL, so maybe I can ask it to keep an eye out for new stuff I might like? Switch off brain, get more cool music. Pay for it. Everyone happy.
So I don't know anything about public APIs from allmusic.com (and in fact they fucked up their public UI a year or so ago so let's hope they're selling on the service), and have no idea if it's even available, or how much they might charge, but - maybe it's worth an approach. You can thank me for it later.
Keep up the cool stuff. It's what some of us enjoy most about this dumb business.
Neil.
Have you considered contacting allmovies.com as a resource for pulling movie based info? Might be a lot cheaper than IMDB.
EWM
Will,
I think you're wrong about Library of Congress not adding useful information. For one, LoC has a decent collection of "excotic" foreign language materials that you can't find on any amazon store.
What's even more important: when you import books from amazon into del.lib. you don't get a place of publication. Now, that may not be important for hobbyists, but if you're a boring academic like myself and if you hope to use del.lib. as your main bibliography database -- well, place of publication is a real deal breaker.
I would very, very strongly vote for LoC inclusion. It wouldn't be too hard for you guyst to do it because they're z39.50, so one can easily figure out how to parse the info.
All best,
Toma
Support for UPC lookup via http://www.upcdatabase.com/ would be great! I'd love to be able to scan in my laserdiscs...not to mention comics, toys, food, and...um...pretty much everything that I own with a barcode. :)
Great program! And a fellow Seattleite! I wanted add more future feature request. I'm one of those movie collectors who collects old movies. I would love to be able to add the actors name and the name of the character they play. I would also like to be able to add Production Credits and be able to search on any name. Also a place for Award Nominations and Wins.
Again Great Program!!!
Kim - Seattle
I know this is a new comment on an old post (I hope someone reads it), but one point against IMDB is that the information they provide is very often WRONG!
There must be a better source of information.
Hmmm, Not sure but I thought DVDpedia supports IMDB stuff... just checking... yep. Maybe they a screen scraping but that stuff is getting in there when Amazon doesn't have it...
The fact that Delicious Library does not support the IMDB (and LoC, etc.) makes it unusable for me (and every serious collector out there). Amazon is very far from having a comprehensive listing of DVDs, CDs or books. The IMDB, for all its faults is amazingly comprehensive and absolutely vital to any DVD collector/film buff.
If your competitors (DVDPedia, ReaderWare) can import IMDB data, so can you. Please do it!
Being a movie biz professional myself, I am utterly disgusted by the amount of money IMDB wants to charge for the use of information that is added and maintained by their user base. How can they justify charging $10K for something that they rely on others for anyway? All they really do is provide an interface for such material and I would speculate that none of the technology or software they use is original either. I should start billing them for all of my time spent either adding or correcting the info on their site. Argh, I feel dirty!
I have nothing wrong with Amazon's database quality (although there's some cover images I'd rather see in a consistent style...) but I have personal grudges against ordering through them. Are there any plans to allow for ordering through Barnes and Noble or others?
This is rather amusing since the IMDB started out as a reader contributed forum.
Before the web you used to download the databases to run locally yourself - different files for the quotes, main info, etc.
Why not have a button open a browser window with the IMDB movie instead? That way you don't have to license anything from them. Just add a button and a field for "IMDB code" that is provided by a Db or input by the user.
Wil,
Neil mentiones Allmusic, please add my vote to the list.
I'm using your application for DVDs only; the CD collection still waits. This is mostly because most of the records are obviously not so commen - jazz from the 40ies to today. Allmusic covers these best as far as I could find out.
One more point: Another complete segement of collections seems to be let out: LPs. Please add me to the list "Could we please have LPs as object type?". Meaningful especially in combination with - allmusic, ok, we've had that already ;-)
kind regards, keep on rolling,
Kai
for isbn you might want to look at http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/isbn/274275525X
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