I was listening to some audio samples of voice talent today for work and it occurred to me through a simple change in how the samples were created I could get much more out of the experience. As you probably know, ID3 tags contain all sorts of helpful information about the track of music, or the audio book, or the whatever happens to be in the format.
I listened to about half a dozen MP3 files which had been emailed to me and a few others as links… when I clicked them iTunes opened up, though it could have been any media player…As is my habit, I looked over at the album art / now playing area but saw nothing. It probably would have taken the talent house about 30 seconds to add the head-shot of the person whose voice I was listening, but they clearly did not do that and I am guessing it’s because they just did not think about it.
As Adam Curry recently mentioned on his daily Source Code audio blast, there is simply too much focus on the music …speaking about devices and licensing. I agree though certainly music is the sexy part of portably players much more so than audio books and way more so than audio talent, but since we use the same interfaces for these things, there’s no reason not to take advantage of the tools.
Dave Winer has been broadcasting morning coffee notes and while he’s been driving across the continent, he’s included a nice photo (yes I know that link was for a video, but he left a still on the audio, which was the same) as the art behind each file. It’s a nice way to contextualize the experience and squeeze get a bit more flavor out things.