Semantic integration of audio content providers through the Audio Commons Ontology

A broad variety of audio content is available online through an increasing number of repositories and platforms. Resources such as music tracks, recorded sounds or instrument samples may be accessed by users for tasks ranging from customised music listening and exploration, to music making and sound design using existing sounds and samples. However, each online repository offers its own API and represents information through its own data model, making it difficult for applications to exploit the plurality of online audio and music content on the web. A crucial step toward integrating audio repositories in a flexible manner is a shared basis for modelling the data therein. This paper describes and extends the Audio Commons Ontology, a common data model designed to integrate existing repositories in the audio media domain. The ontology is designed with the involvement of users through surveys and requirements analyses, and evaluated in-use, by demonstrating how it supports the integration of four relevant repositories with heterogeneous APIs and data models. While this work proves the concept in the audio domain, our proposed methodology may transfer across a broad range of media integration tasks.