Hi, I’m a beginner. I did look through the guidelines while trying to add a new release, but…
I’m trying to enter accurate/appropriate info for a compilation CD album, and the artwork listing is (in some instances) incorrect for what is on the disc. I know this for a fact, because I’m very familiar with it and have much of it on other formats.
So, my question is: do I add all the information - corrected by myself - to reflect the disc content, or do I blindly parrot what’s mistakenly on the artwork?
Some things are merely typos: apostrophes missing or added, or artist/track reversed. Some are more glaring: completely different mix of a track featured on the disc.
Also, when matching the track and mix with an associated recording, do I just enter as new recording if some of my details don’t match what is already on MB? I noticed that I often find a very close match, but not an identical one.
There are many cases of record companies incorrectly reproducing titles or even artist names, or breaking generally accepted rules of usage for stylistic purposes. In such cases it often makes sense to fix errors and standardize irregularities, valuing correct spelling, punctuation and grammar over faithfulness to the printed release cover. When the correction might be confusing, adding an annotation is encouraged.
in short, please do correct these! as long as they are obvious mistakes you are free to fix the label’s carelessness there is sometimes some grey-area as to what’s considered an ‘obvious mistake’ versus a stylistic choice, but this case seems cut and dry. i would clarify in the annotation what the artwork says and why you corrected it, in case there’s debate about it later.
as for your second question, it depends on how major the differences are. it’s tough to give good advice without seeing the recordings. ideally, the best way to know if it’s the same recording is to listen to both of them very carefully, but that’s not always possible… so it’s okay to err on the side of making a new recording if some of the data doesn’t match up. they can always be merged later.
Style / Recording may have some useful information about this!
i hope this helps! best of luck, and don’t be afraid to ask more questions if i didn’t do a good job answering lol
This appears to be the discogs master for the release you are talking about https://www.discogs.com/master/124950-Various-Prolekulture . It’s always good to add all the releases both vinyl and CD to the release group, fixing any wrong data that you know is wrong. While discogs is generally correct I have had times when it was very wrong. Also track order can be different between CD and vinyl. Oh, great to have you entering data on MB.
