Controlled Vocabularies for Music Metadata

We present a set of music-specific controlled vocabularies, formalized using Semantic Web languages, describing topics like musical genres, keys, or medium of performance. We have collected a number of existing vocabularies in various formats, converted them to SKOS and performed the interconnection of their equivalent terms. In addition, novel vocabularies, not available online before, have been designed by an editorial team. Next to multilingual labels and definitions, we provide hierarchical relations as well as links to external resources. We also show the application of those vocabularies for the production of vector embeddings, allowing for the calculation of distances between keys or between instruments.