MP3 metadata mess

Thinking about metadata.  I'm having to retag a bunch of MP3s I made from CDs.  The ID3v1 tags they have from RealPlayer are not read properly by iTunes, I have to change them to ID3v2 tags.  This is particularly a mess for classical music.  It's unfortunate in that classical music has a very rich set of metadata, you may have something like "The Gordian Knot Unty'd, Z. 597 - Minuet", with performers, conductor, composer, etc. but the schema is just not rich enough or more importantly, used in a standard way.  Album title is pretty consistent.  Beyond that, most of the info gets jammed into a giant long title.  Artist is sometimes the performer, but sometimes the composer.  After that, things just get worse.  I have two CDs from a box set, for one CD The Beatles are tagged as "Pop", for the other they're tagged as "Rock".

This is a mess.  Maybe librarians could have helped this situation out?  Maybe they still can?