XML format for mp3 files

Question

I'm developing a desktop app that will scan a user's system for mp3 files and send their whole collection to a website. I'm assuming the best file format for sending this data to a server would be XML -- although correct me if I'm wrong.

Can someone kindly comment on whether the formatting of the sample XML file below looks okay? Thanks!

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<collection>
    <artist name="Michael Jackson">
        <track>Beat It</track>
        <track>Thriller</track>
    </artist>
    <artist name="The Beatles">
        <track>Hey Jude</track>
        <track>Yellow Submarine</track>
    </artist>
    <artist name="Eminem">
        <track>Lose Yourself</track>
        <track>Without Me</track>
    </artist>
</collection>

Answer 1

You may run into a problem if a track has more than one artist.

You'd have to enter the track for each artist again, or you'd have to only use the first artist, or you'd have to create a new "combined" artist.

Why not omit the artist→track hierarchy?

<collection>
  <track>
    <title>Thriller</title>
    <artist>Michael Jackson</artist>
  </track>
  <track>
    <title>Hey Jude</title>
    <artist>The Beatles</artist>
  </track>
</collection> 

Benefits:

• You can add more metadata for tracks (composer, album, etc.)
• You can add tracks without title and/or artist

If different artists may have the same name, you'd need a way to differentiate the artist elements; e.g. by using id with an ID of an artist database.

Answer 2

It looks fine. I'd add a space before the xml closing tag:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

But surely you want more than artist and track title? Album? Maybe not much else could be figured out by the scanning. But if you can get into the ID3 tag of the MP3 file, you could get more.

An XML Validator found no problems either: http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_validator.asp