Best way to handle a recording that should be merged but contains wrong tracks as well?

MusicBrainz
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I was not sure how to even word this question so I could not find anything while searching.

Anyway is merging 2 recording groups and editing a release and then pointing the recording of a song from its solo recording group to the group it should be merged with the same thing or does this cause problems?

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See this edit I submitted for an example.

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Another way to put this:

  • We have recording A and a duplicate recording B.
  • Normally these would be merged and become just recording A.
  • But recording B had a track added to it which should have been its own recording C.
  • Now recording A has tracks A and recording B has tracks A and C.

Best course of action?

  1. Edit the release that holds track A of recording B and set its recording to recording A, effectively turning recording B into recording C by leaving track C in place.
  2. Move track C to a newly created recording C and then later merge recording A and recording B.
  3. Some combo of 1 and 2 to not have weird leftover data from the moved track. So track A goes to recording A, track C gets a new recording C and recording B auto deletes from having no recordings.
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What do you mean by recording group?

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Sorry, I don’t have the terminology down. By group, I mean the recording but I called it a group as it lists the tracks across releases, like a group, and each member of the “group” is a track from their respective release.

I have edited my 3rd post to, I think, make it make more sense.

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6

For each recording that has inconsistent tracks, see what track added it originally (oldest edit), the inconsistent track(s) (compared to this original track), have later hijacked the recording.
If so, then we want to split the recording:

Edit those wrong tracks’ releases to assign the correct recordings or new recordings, if none are found (or if not sure which one is correct).

See if the hijacked recording got some wrong info added from the wrong tracks (ISRC, relationships, AcoustID).
If so, move that info from hijacked recording to new recordings.

In the end, if you still have recordings that should be merged, merge them.

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7

Is it really the same recording? Recordings on MB can consist of multiple tracks. They should not be merged but recording A could become “part of” recording B.

Sounds like a recording with an appended track on a particular release. That’s often found on releases with a hidden track appended.

On MB such a recording would have a combined title *recording A name / recording B name". If this combined recording does not exist, you should create it by editing the release on which it is found, selecting “add new recording” (Recordings tab).
If it exists and the second part is missing in the title, you should modify its title - best for the track and the associated recording (“Update the recording title to match the track title” in the Recordings tab of the release)

This would be advisable if there is a recording C on the release (a separate track with an index on a CD, or a separate file on digital media releases). If B consists of two tracks, it’s still one recording B with a combined title, and you should not merge it (only correct its title, if necessary)

I’m not sure I understood your problem correctly. A concrete example would be helpful.

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Yes, no speculation is required and you can take what I said at face value. Even if I specified the song names it would not change the situation as all I would do would be changing “recording A” or “recording B” with other names.

The situation is just 2 common problems combined. The usual issues of people making a new recording for no reason and someone adding a track with the same name (original vs re-recorded version) to a recording when it should have been its own. In this situation, the track that should have been its own recording was added to the duplicate recording rather than the original, making this require more steps.

Either way from what you and @ jesus2099 said, it sounds like option 2 is best.

On that though, what exactly is the difference between going with 2 over option 3? Does this cause some weird back-end issues?

Option 3 has to benefit of having 2 fixes happen within the same 7 day change period, rather than the 14 days needed for option 2.

Option 2 has the theoretical negative of missing old information due to the misplaced recording being added and then removed and now the duplicate recording has weird data that ends up accidentally merging with the original.

A couple of other questions related to this, are the AcoustIDs tied to the track in the recording? If the track moved to a new recording, does the AcoustID follow it or is it yet another thing to make sure is removed before the merge?

Also, should the IDs of https://musicbrainz.org/track/ID and acoustid.org/track/ID match when looking at the AcoustID/recording? I have never seen ones that do, so I assume not. With that in mind though, if the AcoustID doesn’t move with the track, or in general, how do you know which AcoustID belongs to which track?

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AcoustID tracks and MusicBrainz tracks are two different unrelated things that unfortunately share the same name, and they are not linked. :slight_smile:

AcoustID main URL is linked to recordings.
So when you want to move it, you have to:

  1. Unlink it from source recording
  2. Assign it (from your sound source) to target recording

Sometimes when you are fixing, you can only do step 1 because you don’t have the target recording at home.

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