Help with editing, noob

Thanks, I don’t feel like sleuthing. Quick and easy, that’s what suits me :smiley:

I sympathise. In Musicbrainz, getting it really, really right is often neither quick nor easy.

One workaround I rely on is to do the best I can within my time budget, then make notes in the annotation. Think that your new Release might share recordings with some older Release? Make a note in the annotation, with a link to the older Release. Have a list of recording engineers etc. that you can’t be bothered to enter as Relationships? List their names and credits in the annotation. It gives someone a fighting chance to complete the work later.

Another workaround is to place a higher priority on scanning and uploading more of the cover art. The back cover, and a couple of pages of the liner not book, often list a lot of detail about the Release. Once the scanned images are up as cover art, someone else can read them and finish the job.

A workaround for when I want to take my time getting it right, and don’t want MusicBrainz or my browser throwing away work, is to do my research and make notes in a text file of the URLs of the Recordings and Artists to which I want to link. Then I can turn the editing task into quick data entry guided by research notes, rather than have it be slow research.

In many search boxes, you can paste a MusicBrainz URL to reliably get a certain result. For instance, paste in “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - MusicBrainz” instead of typing in “Mozart”. You will get your intended result, quickly and certainly. That’s why I make a point of putting URLs in my research notes.

We appreciate your contributions. Every nugget you add is something MusicbBrainz has, which it otherwise might have lacked.

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Yes, thanks. The question is really whether anyone anywhere will ever care that some crappy old budget cassette release is in there and whether entering it at all (let alone finding who did what and what it’s linked to and all that sort of stuff) is warranted. I’m probably the only person left on the planet with all their old records and tapes. Everyone else (and especially the clever types on here) seem to have gone all itunes and digital.

Anyway, I made the decision to give it a go and upload the info from the tapes/records/cd I am putting into my computer but I’m really not prepared to spend too much time doing it. I have enough trouble finding the motivation to do anything at all…

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Not even close!! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

The rule of thumb is - if you would find it useful, then other people like you will too.

It isn’t really that useful even to me, it’s just that I like to learn new things and putting my records into the computer is something new to learn about.

Can I ask another question? With these cassettes, I can scan the cover/insert, but it’s not a nice square picture like you get on a cd cover. Should I still upload it and, if so, as the cassette cover looks or should I crop out the picture only (or do that as well)?

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You’re making scans? :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes: :heart_eyes:

I like front + spine, but it’s really personal preference.
I try and make everyone happy though, example: https://musicbrainz.org/release/f17e1bfb-d550-47e9-9644-d882a187f13e/cover-art

edit: cropping to square (editing a picture to personal preference) is frowned upon

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Yes, mmirG put me on to it with a link, but checking on my printer, it’s easier than that (it (EDIT: ie the tutorial) was scanning using gimp), I can still use the button on my printer to do it, I just have to select to scan it to an image instead of to a file (which is what I do with documents). My camera application has cropping and straightening and that, so I didn’t have to install anything new. It’s not too difficult because I already knew how to use my printer to scan things, so not a big learning curve.

As for the covers, front and spine looks better than the whole insert together. I’m just thinking about how it looks when you download it, you don’t really want ugly text staring at you. I might do it like yours, but again, nobody else probably has my daggy old cassettes so it probably doesn’t really matter.

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Note that I’ve included all 3 variations so that it’s not just what I want. It doesn’t take me much longer to do all 3 versions.

It really is up to you!
Most of the cassettes I add are local releases that are limited to maybe 25 copies… But to me that kind of niche information is far more valuable and interesting than information that can readily be found anywhere.

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Oh, I’m on a roll, I’ll do it while I’m in the mood. Yes, I agree with you about niche/obscure material. The internet is now so clogged up with sales sites, that “real information” can’t be found when you search anymore. Not like it used to. You don’t get any independent sites or blogs or forums, you just get “do you want to buy?” results. Yes, I also agree with you that it doesn’t take much time to crop different bits of the insert. I’ll do it whole, and then like yours for a good-looking download.

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As @aerozol also mention, these releases are likely the ones that will be the hardest to find information about later (or even at all, right now!), which (to me) makes it all the more important that they get documented properly. If someone wants to do research into music from Australia released on cassette, the data you have added to MusicBrainz may prove invaluable.

See also previous discussion somewhat related to this here:

I really, really hope you’ll continue to add the releases you have to MusicBrainz—at your own pace. “Slow and steady wins the race.” :slight_smile:

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Oh, I will, now I’ve figured out the (absolute) basics, I’m already finding it easier to do. However, I’m not sure whether I have the stamina to suss out the intricacies of entering my classical records.

Another question- I have a cd that’s all in Japanese (ie the cover is, the music is just piano). Is it possible to enter that? I can’t read the titles (other than the album title, which is in English).

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I’ve added things like that before by finding the release on a Japanese website like amazon.jp, then copy > paste the track titles and artist names.

I’d like to add my voice to the “obscure is cool” crowd. I’ve saved all my cassettes, even though I no longer have a working cassette player. They’ll all eventually get added, along with my small collection of indie 7" vinyl. Don’t worry about going slow either. I’ve been adding my collection of vinyl, CD’s and downloads for almost 8 years and I’m only up to “P”.

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I don’t have any in a non-Latin script myself, but for the few I’ve edited like that, I’ll either compare the characters to lists on Wikipedia if the script is small enough, or find one of those draw-the-character lookups into a Chinese/Japanese/etc. dictionary. Either way, it does ultimatly come down to blindly trusting my eyes, but I find it a bit easier than wading through undecipherable search results.

Thanks, I think searching for japanese text is more effort than I’m prepared to put in.

Japanese is easy! I can read Japanese! One option is to scan all the cover art, post the images here or on a sharing site, and post a note here asking testers of Japanese to add the Release for you.

Metadata gardening can be a team sport.

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post the images here

do you mean here in the forum? Just start a thread and put the cover up and see if anyone wants to/can enter it?

Those are usually the favorite releases I add to MB. Most often I put also more work into the obscure releases, as I think the more popular ones can be easily completed by others, but all the little details of this old and mostly unknown release are just there on this old album I have in hand. And how awesome is it If somebody is looking for info about this crappy old budget cassette and finds it on MusicBrainz :slight_smile:

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Yes, sure! Give it a try!

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This is really old, but I wanted to note that I’ve never seen an incorrect release date printed on the obi of a Japan release from a major label.

edit: Major exception from @jesus2099 may include CD-DA (music CD) reprints of CCCD (copy control CD) releases, especially from SonyMusic. These are “easy” to identify because SonyMusic’s catalog numbers increment.

(However, there are cases (from Universal Music Japan) where the back cover packaged within that obi is a literal reprint of ancient history, so the date on that back cover would be incorrect, but the date on the obi surrounding the back cover would be correct.)

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The later non-CCCD versions of CCCD releases, may have original date printed, though
I have to check that on mine…

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