I recently added an album called “Fist, Fire, Fuel & Heartache” by Automatic to MusicBrainz. Each track on the album has 2-4 seconds of silence at the beginning, and about 2 seconds of silence at the end. I edited all the songs in Audacity to remove this silence, so would it be okay to add my edited version as a new release? Or should I just add that the tracks have silence at the start and end to the annotation of the current release?
1 Like
Hello!!
To answer your question, we need to check what is the MusicBrainz definition of what is a release! Release - MusicBrainz
A MusicBrainz release represents the unique release (i.e. issuing) of a product containing at least one audio medium (a disc, for example, on a CD release). Each release has one or more identifying properties, such as a release date and country, a label, a barcode, a specific type of packaging or a specific cover art.
You creating an edit of an album for your own consumption that you only have yourself on your own computer isn’t a release! And also, isn’t released, literally.
So no! And also don’t edit nor add your own tracklength!
Idon’t even know if it warrants any annotation? Do you know if it is some kind of error of The Automatic? Do you have privy info about this?
Because if the artist released something an album with silence at the end and at start, well, it is what it is! Mastering artistic choice I guess 
.
7 Likes
Agree with @DarkAdonis here. This is an oddity to be documented in the annotation, but not a reason to upload your own remastering of the album.
If you felt really geeky you could add observations in the annotations of the recordings. I’ve done that before to document the differences in the start and ends of a track.
It will be interesting to see what happens if they do a digital media release. Will they keep the same silences, or shrink the tracks?
3 Likes
Like the others say, you should not add your modified release to MB.
But please add your original DiscID to the existing MB release.
2 Likes
Legend has it, if you put it in your shared folder on P2P networks, it suddenly becomes a legitimate bootleg release.
6 Likes
(I was thinking about that very strongly while typing bahahaha thank you for the laugh)
2 Likes