As per the REST Implementation,
1) Path variables are used for the direct action on the resources, like a contact or a song
ex..
GET etc /api/resource/{songid} or
GET etc /api/resource/{contactid} will return respective data.
2) Query perms/argument are used for the in-direct resources like metadata of a song
ex..,
GET /api/resource/{songid}?metadata=genres it will return the genres data for that particular song.