Africa/Toto - track length conflict

MusicBrainz
Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fd2a465a3f0>
#1

Hi,
I’m new to MusicBrainz so please treat me gently!

I’ve been tagging some digitized music using Picard and have found that for one of my albums - “American Heartbeat” (1982, Epic Records EPC 10045) - there is a significant differences in the actual track lengths compared with those given in the MusicBrainz database.

I’ve listed some differences here - the first value is MusicBrainz and the value in brackets the actual digitized track length I measured:
Track 2 (Rosanna/Toto) 5:31 (3:59)
Track 3 (Who’s Crying Now/Journey) 5:01 (3:45)
Track 8 (More Than a Feeling/Boston) 4:41 (3:17)
Track 9 (Africa/Toto) 4:55 (3:56)

Total length 65:56 (59:00 approx)

These are the worst and there are another 6 tracks on this album that MusicBrainz says are more than 20 secs longer than they actually are. I can understand that precise lengths might vary by a few seconds depending on the length of the lead-in/lead-out I chose, but wouldn’t account for the discrepancies I’m seeing.

I have another recording of “Rosanna/Toto”, on the “101 Power Ballads CD2” compilation - this gives the track length as 3:59 (agrees with my vinyl). When I look this CD up on MusicBrainz it takes me to a different entry for “Rosanna” (7" version) - not the same one I saw from the vinyl lookup.

Can someone explain what’s going on? I’m obviously not fully understanding the MusicBrainz database.

Thanks.

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#2

Have you got a CD? Or vinyl \ cassette? When I find this album I don’t see a CD version. If you are tagging with Picard I am guess you work from a CD?

It is quite possible that your CD has longer tracks and not in the MB database. Or plain people have entered duff data for the LP \ cassette editions.

Ah - maybe it is the Vinyl? If it is the Vinyl, then discogs have some different times to the MB listing which seem closer to yours: https://www.discogs.com/Various-American-Heartbeat/release/4608741 That implies MB just has duff data here.

When that happens, and you are sure you have the correct times there are a few steps to do. First, check the Edit History (on the right hand side). And here we see not much love spent on the edits of this release. Just an initial import.

So next, you can just dive in and make corrections to the times to match your copy as you hold a good copy in hand.

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#3

Please paste links of the release you are talking about:

I guess it’s this one.
Track lengths seem a little bit long for an LP.
Actually, a quick look at its edit history shows that these times were added from a CD tracklist (FreeDB import), so please feel free to fix them.
The linked Discogs page, shows track lengths more similar to yours.

#4

I assume this is the release you’re talking about?
From the editing history it seems that the release was imported from a freedb entry that was actually a CD (edit https://musicbrainz.org/edit/9227221 , gnudb entry replicating freedb http://www.gnudb.org/gnudb/misc/dc0f7410 ).

It sounds like your LP has edited versions (e.g. here’s the single edit of More than a Feeling) and the entry in MB has full length versions.

So it might be best to create a new entry for the LP and change the older release to CD format.

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#5

Yes, that sounds like the best thing to do, indeed.

#6

Thanks for the great response. I’ll do what @highstrung recommends.

Incidentally, my latish reply is because I was expecting to get notification if someone responded, but I didn’t. The topic says I’m watching and will receive notifications, my correct email address is set, and I’ve checked my spam folder. What am I not doing?

#7

Go to your Emails preferences, where you may have same settings as me:

Send me an email when someone quotes me, replies to my post, mentions my @username, or invites me to a topic: never

You can change this to only when away or to always.

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