A multimedia database stores different types of media like text, images, audio, and video. It differs from a standard database by storing media internally rather than just text and numbers. Multimedia databases can be linked or embedded, with linked databases having smaller sizes but slower retrieval and embedded databases having larger sizes but faster retrieval. Data is stored in three parts - raw data, registering data, and descriptive data. Multimedia databases have applications in digital libraries, news, video on demand, music, maps, marketing, and more.