Hello everyone,
I’d like to add several Digital Releases of a Taiwanese artist to the database. With this I have some difficulties regarding the artist credits, release events (release countries) and label name. I have collected the album metadata using the Spotify API and the iTunes API
The artist I am talking about is Ann Bai (白安) :
https://open.spotify.com/artist/6ytn3LGlsoOgU3YGF9T42s
And one album is for example:
https://open.spotify.com/album/3CcrISxzIwT6ZGplop5E5c
https://api.spotify.com/v1/albums/3CcrISxzIwT6ZGplop5E5c/tracks
According to the Spotify Metadata (JSON), the above album has a UPC of: 4713052735160
And it is available on Spotify in these countries:
“available_markets” : [ “AD”, “AE”, “AR”, “AT”, “AU”, “BE”, “BG”, “BH”, “BO”, “BR”, “CA”, “CH”, “CL”, “CO”, “CR”, “CY”, “CZ”, “DE”, “DK”, “DO”, “DZ”, “EC”, “EE”, “EG”, “ES”, “FI”, “FR”, “GB”, “GR”, “GT”, “HK”, “HN”, “HU”, “ID”, “IE”, “IL”, “IN”, “IS”, “IT”, “JO”, “JP”, “KW”, “LB”, “LI”, “LT”, “LU”, “LV”, “MA”, “MC”, “MT”, “MX”, “MY”, “NI”, “NL”, “NO”, “NZ”, “OM”, “PA”, “PE”, “PH”, “PL”, “PS”, “PT”, “PY”, “QA”, “RO”, “SA”, “SE”, “SG”, “SK”, “SV”, “TH”, “TN”, “TR”, “TW”, “US”, “UY”, “VN”, “ZA” ],
If I use the Spotify API to search for this album and the album tracks, the artist name is always given as:
“name” : “Ann Bai”,
“type” : “artist”
No matter which release country. I tried DE,US,FR,RU and also TW (Taiwan).
If I use the Spotify desktop app in German, which is my native language, the artist is credited as “Ann Bai”, if I use the app in Simplified Chinese the artist is Credited as “白安” (Bái ān) and on the Spotify album cover the names “Ann” and “白安” are given.
So my question is, which artist credits should I use when I add the Spotify digital release for Germany and / or Taiwan: “Ann Bai”, “Ann” or “白安”? This question also relates to the other albums of this artist.
In addition:
Is it justified to set the release country to “worldwide” considering the countries given above, or should I only add a release event for Germany and / or Taiwan, or all countries given above and leave the rest to other editors?
Furthermore, the label on Spotify and iTunes is “Bin Music International Limited” but the label entry in the MB-database: https://musicbrainz.org/label/e3fb579e-6d40-48bd-9b19-363f176f29cb says that “B’in Music International Co., Ltd.” is a holding company and not to be used as label.
So which alias is the right one to use: “B’in Music”, “Bin Music” or the Chinese one “相信音乐”
One last question:
If I search the iTunes API using the UPC given above, I also get a matching release on the iTunes Store and Apple Music for different countries:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/1445811720
https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?upc=4713052735160&country=us&entity=song
https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?upc=4713052735160&country=de&entity=song
https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?upc=4713052735160&country=tw&entity=song
According to the metadata from the iTunes API (JSON) the artist is credited simply as “Ann” in North America (US, CA) and as “白安” (Bái ān) in every other country I tried (including DE, FR, CH, RU and TW). On the iTunes / Apple Music album cover the names “Ann” and “白安” are given.
Given that the iTunes and Spotify releases seem to have the same UPC and the same track length, is it save to treat them as one release or is it better to treat them as separate releases, because of the different artist credits? Or are only the credits on the album cover of relevance. I have not purchased the iTunes releases nor have I any physical releases (CDs) to verify the credits.
I’d still like to add these releases. As these are the first releases I will be adding, I want to minimize editing work afterwards. After reading the documentation I am still not sure what the best course of action is.
It would be nice if someone could clarify this for me. Sorry for the long post, I hope this topic is appropriate.
A Happy New Year to everyone.