4.1 Terms and definitions

For the purposes of this Part 2 of the ECM standard the following terms have the definitions specified in this clause. Although all the terms below are capitalised, they appear in the text of the ECM standard in lower case, for ease of readability. This does not apply in this standard to Entity Cluster, Entity Cluster Type and Musical Work Cluster Type because these terms are specialised for the purpose of this standard.

Cluster

See Entity Cluster

Cluster Member

An entity that is part of a cluster, in accordance with the relevant Entity Cluster Type’s disambiguation rules.

Cluster Root

An entity within a cluster that is designated as the primary reference point for that cluster and to which all other cluster members are understood to refer.

Disambiguation

A mechanism to determine whether entities are the same or not with regard to the specifications of an identification scheme, and hence should be assigned a single identifier or different identifiers. Disambiguation is typically performed through the application of a well-defined set of metadata elements, referred to as the reference metadata for the relevant identifier scheme.

Entity Cluster

A well-defined set of entities grouped together as part of an Entity Cluster Type.

Entity Cluster Type

Collective noun for all clusters that are based on the same set of rules.

Member

See Cluster Member

Music Video

An audio-visual recording of the performance of a musical work.

Musical Work

A work intended to be perceivable as a combination of sounds, with or without accompanying text. Any words that are intended to be expressed with a musical work (often termed lyrics) form part of that musical work. Not all musical works have lyrics. A musical work may be expressed and fixed to become part of a sound recording or a music video, or may be used to create notated music (sheet music, scores, instrumental parts) or sound generation codes (such as MIDI files). In some cases, the musical work comes into existence simultaneously with its expression. This is common in extemporised forms such as jazz music.

Musical Work Cluster

An Entity Cluster Type that clusters resources such as sound recordings and music videos each of which are manifestations of performances of the same (i.e. one) particular musical work.

Reference Metadata

A set of metadata items describing characteristics of the entity being identified which are used by an identifier scheme’s disambiguation rules to determine whether two entities are “the same” (with respect to that identifier system) or “not the same”.

Sound Recording

An audible persistent manifestation of a subject (often but not necessarily of a performance). Sound Recordings may embody one or more musical works.