My clean-up of The Score is proving to be more complicated than expected. Let me try to explain:
Tracks on The Score are connected by rap intros, overlapping with the previous track. On CD, index points were set after the intro, leaving it at the end of the preceding track.
The album was also released on vinyl - 2xLP, no overlapping between A/B, B/C and C/D, each respective intro is entirely at the beginning of the next side. This concerns almost half of the tracks (6 of 13).
Several single releases include album tracks with or without their intro, but of course, there’s no intro at the end. They fade out where the LP versions end rather abruptly.
The album was also released on CD in an edited (clean) version.
Up to 5 versions can be identified per song:
- album CD version: song+intro
- album LP version: intro+song
- single/compilation version without intro, faded out
- single/compilation version with intro, faded out
- clean version
IMO these would be different recordings by MB rules.
On the other hand, this can’t be achieved without losses. The recording Killing Me Softly currently includes tracks with appended intro (album CD, 4:58) and faded out (in compilations, ~4:50). I could only restore one acoustID to a new recording.
And separate recordings will be hard to maintain. Even if I clean up now, soon recordings will be messed up again. I’ve noticed how difficult it is to put all relevant information into a short disambiguation.
It would be much easier to merge them all and write an annotation. The only recordings that are really different are the clean versions and one LP exclusive.