I haven’t seen any scripts simplifying the process of adding data from Allmusic, although there are scripts for iTunes, Amazon, etc. Is there a particular reason for that? I haven’t found another site that has better classical music data. I don’t have good scripting skills but could probably hack together an Excel spreadsheet to make copying tracklists over a relatively simple matter, if there’s interest and assuming that’s permissible.
Well I know that Allmusic changed their policies on data scraping years ago which led to Kodi (XBMC back then) abandoning their allmusic scraper (https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=116461). That might have something to do with it. But yeah, I wasn’t able to find an allmusic importer either.
The main problem with Allmusic is that their tracklists are standardised to hell and back. So, unless they’ve changed this relatively recently, a direct Allmusic import leads to stuff like “3 Songs for Baritone and Orchestra (or Piano, or Harp): Very Nice Title” even if the release just has “Very Nice Title” (which is, in that case, what we should list). I very rarely see any Allmusic tracklist that does belong into MB as-is, and unless we have a different source, it’s hard to know what the tracklist should actually be! They’re quite great for track times though 
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I’ve always found AllMusic to be acceptable for average listeners looking for average information. But as a musician, it is an absolutely disgusting site. Full of errors and generalities. Not good for any “expert” information. Certainly not worth a script on MB.
In fact, when I was on WP, I could always tell right away when someone would use AM to add information. If they didn’t source it, I would remove it because I didn’t want that information repeated.
I do agree, that they are very good for track times. Even when they are wrong, they apply the same “formula” to all of their calculations. Which is far more reliable than places like iTunes or Amazon, where a sum of all the track times can be up to a 4 second difference for each track. I mean, how do you say an album runs for 43:21 but post track times that add up to 42:11, and the downloaded files run for 44:30.
*numbers are just a made up example, there is no real life instance of this.
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Interesting - seem to be some mixed opinions on the site. Their ads are terrible, which is the main issue that I have with Allmusic. I haven’t noticed data errors there, so would be curious to know what to look out for. I do think the site is the best resource for tagging classical releases, short of going to the individual labels themselves, which is a bit more difficult. If you tag from Amazon or iTunes, for instance, these sites don’t appear to list the composers so the tags will be incorrect. I did end up creating an Excel spreadsheet to make things simpler to copy over from Allmusic. It’s not a fully automated process, but if you copy the track listing table from Allmusic and drop it in on the first tab you should get what is essentially a Musicbrainz-formatted table on the second tab that you can copy/paste into the tracklist on Musicbrainz (one medium at a time, for releases with multiple discs). Uploading here in case anyone finds it valuable. Also including a screenshot to show how the data should be pasted in to make this work.
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HA, so many ads that my browser wouldn’t even let AllMusic open for a year.
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Some have already been mentioned.
But others would be omissions, spelling errors, and personnel errors (and combinations of all three).
- associating John Smith with John Smith instead of John Smith.
- calling John Smith, John Smit - and giving John Smit his own page because of their own error.
- My personnel favorite is when they give John Smith a page, and John Q Smith a page even though they are the same person.
That is why some artists have multiple AM links on their MB page - because they have minor spelling differences.
And that is why some of the AM pages aren’t listed on MB - the credits listed are for multiple artists with the same name.
They list Pedal Steel Guitar as Steel Guitar.
They call all bass guitars as bass guitar - sometimes you may find a double bass.
Do they list Coronet and French Horn, or is it classified as a Trumpet and Horn? (been a while since I checked)
Like I said in my first post - most people don’t know the difference between a those instruments and all of their variations, so it is fine for them. But if you want any legitimacy, one would want to differentiate.
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AllMusic gets their data (including reviews) from TiVo Corporation. They’re one of the best resources I’ve found for cover art; they’re also good for bios. Unfortunately, their album info is unreliable and for some reason there are lots of duplicate releases. I think they have a much bigger problem with release authentication than they do with authority control.
From a link relationship standpoint, it sucks when the cover art disagrees with the release data (label, year of release, etc.). AllMusic has an interface for submitting corrections to TiVo, but… I’ll stick with open projects.