This paper examines multimedia from a perspective of both data modeling and application development. It outlines a layered paradigm as a preferred approach to modeling, proposes a new layered multimedia data model (LMDM), and then demonstrates how the LMDM can be used together with a database of multimedia data to describe and support a large number of present and future multimedia applications. In addition, evaluation criteria are proposed by which the effectiveness of any new multimedia modeling approach should be assessed. The paper concludes with an attempt to evaluate the utility of the LMDM in the light of these criteria.