About localized URL relationships

MusicBrainz
, ,
1

Apple music, iTunes, Amazon, Qobuz (and some other) URL relationships have some form of localization in the link itself, for example, https://music.apple.com/us/artist/203209842 has /us/, and https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/203209842 has /gb/.
Both of these links are valid, but which one is “correct”? Alix Perez is a British artist, so I would expect to see the /gb/ URL and not the /us/ URL, but at the moment, he has both versions linked as relationships on his MB page.
It gets more interesting if we consider that he was born in Belgium. Should the relationship be https://music.apple.com/be/artist/203209842 then?
What about a group where the members are from different areas? SHADES doesn’t really have an area, one of the members is from the US, and the other one is from the UK. Which apple music link is the “correct” one for this group?
I’m sure we can discuss other artists, like the worldwide MusicBrainz Sound Team, if it had an apple music page :laughing:

Here’s some other examples of artist pages with “incorrect” URL relationships:

Another thing I wanted to bring some attention to is Harmony’s release actions feature. Example here.
It’s very useful, especially for newer editors to have an easy way to add URL relationships to artists, but it does create cases where duplicate links are added without double-checking. Circling back to the example above of Alix Perez, the /gb/ link was added in this edit with the help of Harmony, when the page already had an (incorrect, IMO) /us/ link added a few months prior.
And continuing down this path, if I were to use the release actions page I linked above, I would end up adding a third, /nz/ apple music link to his page, because Harmony’s preferred location was set to NZ, so it found links that work in New Zealand.

There’s also the case of releases. In my experience, the vast majority of digital releases are added with either US or GB links, regardless of where the artist or label are from. Again, these are perfectly valid, but one has to wonder if it’s the correct approach.
Some time ago I asked @agatzk about it, in this edit Edit #110247400 - MusicBrainz
I pretty much agree completely with their reasoning. If it can be any link, why not the artist’s country?
In the same vein, I recently finished updating the label Big Fish Recordings. I tried to add /ca/ links only, because it’s a Canadian label, which seems more correct to me than leaving it to the default /gb/, and easier than looking up the area of every artist :laughing:

I just wanted to create this thread to get a general consensus on what to do in these cases. As I mentioned before, all of these links are perfectly valid, but there’s gotta be an agreed upon way to handle these things.

6 Likes
2

To kick off the thread, I found this interesting link from apple - https://performance-partners.apple.com/linking
Here’s the interesting bit

image
image496×408 28.2 KB

So a link like https://geo.music.apple.com/artist/203209842 will work no matter what

4 Likes
3

It’s definitely worth creating issues in Harmony if you have ideas for improvement:

I currently can’t find any there related to artist URL seeding.

1 Like
4

My opinion on this hasn’t changed much. Redundant links are no good, so for stores with localized URLs, why not add the one most relevant to the artist.

We could perhaps standardize on global links, but it would probably need to be optional for local cases. Like how we automatically remove the words from a URL:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/2025-super-bowl-lix-megamix-dj-mix/1793843454
becomes
https://music.apple.com/us/album/1793843454

Maybe the best solution is a simple guideline e.g. “When adding external links to digital services or stores with localized URLs (e.g. Apple Music), the locale most relevant to the artist should generally be used.”

I think we agree that this would not be enforced—any region link is valid and never does this guideline enable the removal or ‘no-voting’ of correct, unique data.

On Harmony:

I have also encountered this issue and already mistakenly annoyed an editor about it. That said, an external link to the service/store with a non-relevant location is also great (non-duplicate), so I think it’s good Harmony is helping us complete this data easily. It’s also fairly simple to detect and clean up the duplicates.

3 Likes
5

Right now I wouldn’t really know how to tackle this. Maybe Harmony checks if the artist already has any apple music link? I’ll think of something and contact kellnerd there, or through the discord.

In 2023 I learned that we can’t just remove the country code from apple music links

But we could do something with the global links I mentioned above. I have seen them being used on RateYourMusic

Agree 100%

1 Like
6

I guess the high proportion of US/GB links will be due to editor locations? I’d suspect there are more editors here from English-language locations than others.

Could the code for the link-already-exists checks when adding External Links to an artist be adapted to ignore the country code between apple.com/??/album perhaps? It doesn’t solve for ‘correctness’ but it’d cut down the duplication.

For bands with members from multiple countries (or folks from ‘disputed’ territories), there’s often not going to be one subjectively correct answer. Even for individuals: born in W, grew up in X, initially famous in Y, now lives and performs in Z. Or born in (unknown), lives in (unknown), releases music only online on internationally-accessible platforms would be another extreme.

Global links that aim towards the user’s own locale would be best, in the same way wikidata links are preferred over wikipedia, if it can be generated in some way.

3 Likes
7

Different countries in most of those platforms can have somewhat different content, so in theory at least there’s a bit of a point on having multiple entries (that’s also why we don’t just standardize them all even when country-less links are supported by the sites - the artist page might not even exist in the country a country-less link gets redirected to).

In most cases though, I just add a link and I don’t think too much about what country Google sent me to, personally - most of the info is going to be as useful looking at the Guyana Apple Music page as the Great Britain one.

5 Likes
8

What I have been doing for digital releases (and I’m not the first, I picked this up from another editor but can’t remember who) is looking at the country code within the ISRCs and pick the most common one for the country code for URLs for Apple Music & Qobuz if that link works in that country. So, typically US artist will have US links, etc. If it’s not available (US artist on different label in Europe, for example), then I’ll pick one that works.

3 Likes
9

I add links to other countries when there’s significant differences in an artist’s discography, such as albums being released by different labels.

10

I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like that. Do you have an example?

11

I didn’t think much of the global links on Apple Music. But now that I tried them, I’ve realized that you’d get 404ed if trying to access a release that’s not available in your region. Making them the norm on MB might be problematic for releases that have a smaller reach of only a few countries or are excluded from major markets. Try this album for example that should be available only in the German-speaking countries (DE+AT+CH): https://geo.music.apple.com/album/522069047

Qobuz has a similar feature where you can drop the localization (us-en or other two-letter code combos for countries and languages) from their URLs, it will automatically direct you (depending on your prior browsing) either to the local store of your current location or the one that you last browsed. And if the release is not found there, it will re-direct you to the artist page. An example of how far you can go in simplifying Qobuz links: https://www.qobuz.com/album/_/iya3267xo3joa
Admittedly, I’ve been guilty of adding these unlocalized Qobuz links, mostly because I use the YAMBS seeder (which drops the localization from URLs) where I can test releases for their UPC before I add them to MB. Maybe it’s not that big a deal for a service that’s currently available in only 20+ countries.

3 Likes
12

I agree with you in principle. Fortunately, editors don’t have to guess what region is most relevant to the artist, for that should be the artist’s “Area”. So, generally the URL’s region should be the same as the artist’s area.

But, I was happy to learn from @afrocat that Apple Music URLs can still be region-free, as that’s my preference.

13

Maybe I misunderstood how the apple music geo links work, then.
Opening https://music.apple.com/at/album/522069047 works just fine, but https://geo.music.apple.com/album/522069047 (no /at/) results in a 404.
Opening https://geo.music.apple.com/at/album/522069047 however, redirects me to https://music.apple.com/mx/album/fantastisk-allerede/393489729 which is a different version of that release, with a different barcode.
I think these geo links are supposed to redirect me to whatever’s actually available in my region instead of 404ing. Useful for casual users, not so useful for us I suppose.

2 Likes
14

I get no error - I’m redirected to at and that’s correct for my location.

15

Yeah, if you live in Austria it doesn’t need to redirect to anywhere else. As DenizC mentioned, that particular release is available in DE, AT, and CH. Attempting to open https://geo.music.apple.com/album/522069047 (no country code) from anywhere else other than those 3 countries should result in a 404. But including the country code in that same “geo” URL results in a redirect to an available release for the user’s country, in my case, the version that’s available in Mexico.
Like I said, useful for casual users who just want to access the music, not so useful for us, who care about the details of every version :laughing:

2 Likes
16

Confirming that trying to visit https://geo.music.apple.com/album/52206904 from the UK redirects to https://music.apple.com/album/522069047 …which gives “The page you are looking for can’t be found”.

17

Sigur Rós’ discography is released by Krunk (the band’s own label) in North America (US example); Krunk and local labels in Iceland; and Krunk and Parlophone everywhere else (UK example).

18

Just jumping in here with a Qobuz specific solution…

It was pointed out to me in the Qobuz forum that copying and pasting a url like this:

gives a region specific version of the album.

BUT if you click share on the album page you get a “universal” link like this:

This is what I’ll be doing in future! Maybe there is a similar way of doing it for other streaming sites.

19

Just use the “www.qobuz.com”, ie. https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/sallinen-sinfonia-chorali-string-quartet-paavo-berglund/zd4kmpbj2n7ha link for where the ISRCs or artist is from. Your “universal” link isn’t universal. It only shows if you live in the region where it is. For example, if the release is only available in France, for example, it will give me a not found response since I live in the US. I can’t even view it. However, the www.qobuz.com link will at least let anyone view the page no matter where they live. You are correct about using “play.qobuz” though. No one should use that as it won’t even let you view it unless you are a paying member.

2 Likes
20

I’ve been thinking about this again, and I feel like this artist should only have the /is/ link, and keep the US & UK links at the release level where appropriate.
I think the artist URL relationship should just represent the fact that the music is available in that platform, and if people are looking for the specific US and UK releases, then they can look at the actual releases in MB, which should have those links.

3 Likes