A multi‐source seeder for digital releases

Just ran into an issue when going to submit a Spotify release.
Cached page
It appears that 206 countries were found (not all countries) but there is no list of countries that were not found…
I’ll hold off on submitting this release since if it is really not worldwide, I’d expect there to be a list of where it’s not available

Edit: same here

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https://etc.marlonob.info/atisket/?preferred_countries=gb&spf_id=3HcPxww6GQLBeKnZIRX5cl&deez_id=15787564&itu_id=1220259766&upc=191061531425&preferred_vendor=itu&search_itu_countries=si

You are correct. There are supposed to be 226 countries. I don’t think the mirror should remove any countries that are reported by the API, even if they are countries that aren’t officially on Deezer’s list. If they are in that country, than so be it. But I’m not sure if that’s what is causing this issue.

Oh. And it is a Worldwide release as you can see, so it doesn’t really matter what countries are being reported on this release.

OK, I can see you’ve ticked the “Search iTunes globally for release countries” option. The output is correct when that option is left unticked:

To be honest I’ve not even looked at the code that implements that functionality, and the whole concept seems like a bad idea to me. Can someone explain why it is needed?

I’m a bit confused by this comment given we discussed this before and you stated:

The current behaviour for Deezer is as follows:

  1. Retrieve the country availability for each track on a release.
  2. Keep only the countries where every track on the release is available.
  3. Remove any countries from the resulting list that are not displayed on the Deezer developers “available regions” page (this removes countries like Antarctica).

This seems like the most sensible approach to me.

@atj I usually check the Search iTunes globally option to make sure iTunes is also available in the same countries as Spotify/Deezer. If a release was worldwide for Spotify and Deezer but only North America for iTunes, wouldn’t that constitute a separate release on MB?

I know other people won’t agree, but personally I don’t think that would constitute a separate release, providing there are no other differences.

I’ve just had a look at the code and, as I suspected, whenever the "Search iTunes globally for release countries” option is selected, it loops over every country where iTunes is available (179 currently) and performs an API query. I have to say I’m amazed that the client hasn’t been blocked for doing this (perhaps this is why @marlonob’s version is failing), but it’s not acceptable IMV. I’ll be disabling that functionality in the near future I’m afraid.

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If it’s only available in North America, it will have a different upc than global releases from other vendors.

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I have created my own tool (available here) that links to a-tisket, this time in the form of a spicetify-cli extension (it adds a button to a-tisket on release pages in the Spotify desktop client)
Example image:Example image

I was not aware of your mirror until now, @atj. Thank you for your continued work!

I doubt my extension will add that much more load, but please let me know if I should change the embedded default link in the future to a different mirror than the original.

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@Chilkara I guess my point is that sometimes iTunes, Spotify and Deezer had different release countries

If it’s worldwide on one platform but not on another, should we still list it as worldwide?

@atj I understand the feature isn’t optimal the way it is written, but what about for iTunes/Apple Music-only releases. How are we supposed to find the release countries then?

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@Paperspock, happy for you to link to my mirror if you wish. :+1:

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I didn’t mean that to say to remove them when reported by the API. I was saying not to show them on the list title “Countries excluded”. I don’t think it’ll matter much either way though, because those oddball “countries” like Antartica, would likely only show up a Worldwide release anyway, and therefor wouldn’t need to be added as a country of release, but if for some reason it’s in those countries, but not in the U.S., I think it should still show them, because their API does.

YES. iTunes, Spotify & Deezer are retailers and/or services. The release itself is worldwide. However, it’s very rare honestly, that country availability is different amongst platforms. There are surely additional countries, but rarely say, on one service it’s in the US, but not on another service.

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There are occasions where a-tisket reports multiple releases as the same release. Be very, very careful about this. I always start with the Spotify a-tisket link, this is because a-tisket at times will not report Spotify releases unless you have the Spotify ID in the search field. Always run the Spotify ID in the field. If you start from Spotify a-tisket link, you’ll avoid this issue. Than always run with i-Tunes as the main source and check mark that box to run in every country. Deezer will be found by the barcode that was reported from Spotify, if it has a corresponding link. If iTunes has same barcode, run again to make sure all iTunes countries are found. Now, back to my multiple release as one issue. Always check Tatsumo’s ISRC importer first. Then look at all releases by artist field. Sometimes, multiple releases have the same barcode, but different labels associated with them. a-tisket, because it’s barcode based, cannot differentiate between these releases and will sometimes report them all as the same release. They are not. If you see 5 releases of the same album on Tatsumo’s site, than they are all different releases. If you run the Deezer & iTunes IDs they typically follow the same list of countries that the Spotify API does. I hope this makes sense. I know it was kinda rambling.

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Makes sense to me. I guess the only thing I’d add is sometimes a Deezer release with the same barcode as Spotify/iTunes won’t automattically be picked up by a-tisket when starting with the Spotify ID. I’ll sometimes check Deezer after submitting a Spotify/iTunes release just to realize it has the same barcode along with everything else and so I have to manually add it later.

One last question: Would it make sense to just check for release countries one service at a time to see if any of them are worldwide and if so mark the MB release as worldwide? I know a-tisket searches Spotify + Deezer countries by default, but what if it was available in all 92 Spotify countries, but not all the additional Deezer countries…is this still worldwide?

I beg you. The only reason I use this is for the checking every country option on iTunes. I will not support this if that is removed. I can get the API information from Spotify & Deezer and there are importers for all 3. That iTunes country check is only thing this has that isn’t available anywhere else.

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Yeah, Deezer is weird. Sometimes, it picks up releases as being in the US, but when I go to Deezer and do a search for that release it gives me a different link than a-tisket does. Not sure why.

@atj, when you’ve resolved licensing I’d be happy to host an instance also.

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I will let everyone know if I hear anything from @marlonob about this. Note that I haven’t contacted them directly about it, as I expect they would reply to this thread.