Media collections (MC) service embodiments are presented which generally facilitate access to diverse forms of media by resolving an identifier tuple assigned to a content item into a set of one or more Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) which point to an instance of the content item. This scheme supports the upload and query of collections of media elements such as images, audio, video, deep zoom images, photosynth and so on. In addition, the foregoing scheme affords a standard way to bind to media that persists, and makes it easier to author and play content while being flexible about where the media is located.