A media identifier registry for managing metadata records. The registry stores a unique logical identifier for each of the records as well as a base type corresponding to each of the logical identifiers. The base types are representative of the information contained in the respective metadata records for the corresponding logical identifiers. The registry further defines associations between the logical identifiers and base types. Improvements in identifying media content and related information according to the invention permit building a media data warehouse capable of aggregating data from many different sources, uniquely identify the same piece of content from different data providers, in different cultures, and in different physical forms to allow a consistent set of data to be stored and retrieved.