Using data via a-tisket, I added the digital media release of “Ghetto Love” to the release group, which already contained the original album release.
Because the recordings on both releases are the same (they have the same ISRCs, see here and here), I used the original album release as starting point for the tracklist creation:
I then manually changed the track durations back to match the durations stated on iTunes. This is a tideous task and it raised two questions:
Should I even bother to do that? The recordings are acoustically the same. I think “yes”, because the durations are one more detail to differentiate releases.
Could we exempt the durations? On the “Release Duplicates” tab, I wish you could check an option to not re-use the track durations. With other words, I’d like to be able to use another release as starting point but with the option to not overwrite the tracks’ duration fields.
I do exactly what you did, except for only using the same UPC. The CD release that you used didn’t have the discIDs set for the times. That’s why the times are off. I went ahead and set them. Don’t forget to round up if manually adding times. iTunes displays truncated times, not rounded times, so you’ll see a time like 5:29.99 as 5:29 and not 5:30. I know it’s time consuming, but I’d always keep the imported times that a-tisket gives over manual adds. I know this causes you to have to manually go over track by track, but it’ll be more correct in the long run. However, if an existing digital release with imported times exists you can save time by doing exactly what you did.
