Notice that the track duration shown at the bottom of each image differs, as is expected when music tracks and music videos normally contain different audio content. (The title metadata also happens to differ between the audio side and the video side, as the audio title includes “(feat. Poppy)” but the video title does not.) (Per Style / Principle / Error correction and artist intent - MusicBrainz, both the title and artist credits need to be fixed on both sides.)
Universal Music has helpfully taken the position that new Spotify releases with separate audio and video sides get unique barcodes not used on other music platforms.
I have noticed this as well in the past month really. A bunch of releases that are showing videos like this. Hopefully there will always be a different barcode than the ones without videos.
the music videos should be added individually as their own releases, as they all have their own barcode. essentially the way it works is that spotify links tracks with the same name to a music video if there is one available. the releases with music videos are not considered new releases, it just gives you the option to switch over to a different release.
here is a screen recording of how it works: Dropbox
as you can see, when you switch to the video, it also switches the release it’s playing from. instead of WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA, the album title now says CANNIBALISM!.
there’s no way to access this release on the mobile app, but on the desktop app, you can find these new releases under the artist’s profile when clicking “go to album”. each music video has its own unique album id and associated barcode when you import with harmony.
this is false as well. spotify allows artists and labels to upload a “canvas” for individual tracks, which is the animated image you are talking about. it just appears that the record label didn’t upload one for “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”, but did for “Beat It”. canvas can be turned on and off in settings and have existed on spotify since around 2019 or so.
personally, i would consider this a video-only release. the artist hasn’t released an audio-only version other than this, and it doesn’t appear as a single on his profile, only the video section. the only reason an audio-only version exists is because of the spotify funtionality to turn the video off.
i think you might have misunderstood me. what i am trying to say is that each music video is listed as its own release with its own barcode. when you listen to an album that has the video icon on specific tracks, it is redirecting you to that release. i am not saying that every music video has an audio release associated with it.
Well, the point I was trying to make here is that UMG (the American branch of Universal Music Group) has intentionally issued unique barcodes to their Spotify audio releases that correspond to videos.
i disagree. umg has been issuing unique barcodes to spotify, well before they started adding music videos. i’m not exactly sure why they do this, because they don’t always do it, but it’s something that’s been in place for many years now.
All 4 of those examples are from American artists under American labels of UMG.
Japanese artists/labels under UNIVERSAL MUSIC LLC (Universal Music Japan) don’t do this in the same time range when there aren’t titles to translate to Latin script and rights aren’t divided between different companies for different partitions of the world.
I was also wondering if the videos were linked to releases or the audio recordings with a switch? I’ve seen them show video links on recordings in the middle of ordinary audio releases. Seems that it’s just an option to watch the video when a track comes up. I guess what I’m asking is, do various artist compilations, etc also have the option to watch the video if it’s the same track? If so, then I’d say that’s not part of the overall release. Adding them separately might be the better way to go.
