Sorry for yet another question about recordings. To my understanding, remixes and remasters don’t make for unique recordings, but snippets of songs on mixtapes do. My question is, does that carry over to CD pressings of an album with unique Table of Contents (TOC) values and/or pre-gap lengths? Because if I’m understanding TOCs correctly, they are the point at which a song ends and the next one starts. So doesn’t that mean that pressings of the same album with different TOCs are slightly ‘cropped’ differently from the master tapes? And does this constitute a unique recording for MusicBrainz?
And for those that don’t know, you can get the TOCs of your discs by ripping them in Exact Audio Copy on Windows, or X Lossless Decoder on Mac, along with a lot of other information.
I would say no, pre-gap/different TOC gaps do not make a new MusicBrainz recording.
P.S. ‘remixes’ (another artist substantially changing a song) and new mixes do make for new recordings, though when they say ‘new mix’ sometimes it does not (they are really re-mastering).
In my opinion, a ‘’‘new mix’‘’ does.
Mastering does not constitute a new recording, but as soon as it is mixed anew, there should be a new recording, even if it’s still similar.
Thanks @ernstlx, you are right, I rewrote that sentence a few times and ended up losing what I really wanted to say. I have changed it to read as below:
‘remixes’ (another artist substantially changing a song) and new mixes do make for new recordings, though when they say ‘new mix’ sometimes it does not (they are really re-mastering).
In my experience people mix up the terminology all the time. That said it’s probably not worth worrying about, if they say it’s a new mix, and in particular if someone is credited for the new mix, add a new recording. I was overcomplicating it in the first place, I reckon
