I was going to ask this in the Harmony thread… but it has potential to get out of hand fast…
Okay… this is some madness I am spotting in the digitial shops, but I think needs documenting somehow.
Why is it when I look up this Deezer album through Harmony (and ATiscket) do the errors of Deezer get ignored? They are using different versions of multiple tracks
(Today, in Feb 2025) From GB when you are on Deezer’s Chumbawamba page, click on Tubthumper and you are taken to an album with many alternate tracks on it. 1,2,6,7 especially.
I know this album too well so can tell that track 1 uses a single (3:33) instead of album (4:45) version. And track 7 is from an alternate USA edit which has the end of track 6 on start of track 7 (which bizarrely means if you listen to track 6 and 7 on Deezer I assume you’d hear the same minute of audio twice… )
For reference, UK Spotify: Tubthumper on Spotify UK Look at tracks 1,2,6,7 and the differences in the lengths. Or the UK CD version
Why does Harmony ignore these errors and treat Deezer as having the same version as iTunes \ Spotify \ Tidal? Really that should be split into a separate release. If a release is added via Harmony then the Deezer link should be dropped.
This album has a bit of a history of different CAN/MX/USA version when compared with the rest of the world… but I am trying to avoid mentioning that mess yet. It does mean a USA editor will see a totally different result here
I am manually trying to fix a number of weird errors with digital version of this album… but that is for later in this thread
So from my perspective, everything works as expected and there is no issue. If the Deezer link somehow shows a different release in the UK without a redirect, that would be concerning.
Your Spotify link on the other hand has 13 tracks and a different barcode, so Harmony refuses to merge these. The track lengths are mostly the same as on the 12 track release, only for tracks 6 and 7 I also see the oddity which you described (5:45+4:08 instead of 4:45+5:08).
Edit: The 12 track release seems to be what you are calling the CAN, MX, USA edition which looks like it is available worldwide to me (artist name on white background).
The 13 track release (artist name on red background) is also worldwide.
Both are on MB already and seem to have the correct links, the 13 track release is triplicated even (one with a 12 digit barcode, and two others zero-padded to 13/14 digits ).
Please note this is not supposed to be a criticism of Harmony. I am just confused with what I see starting from https://www.deezer.com/en/album/303383 and how to keep up with the changes on the release page.
And that is a different issue with this release. It first appeared as a 12 track CD and some streaming services show it as 12 tracks. (And they all did in 2021) So a different release really.
The 13th track is adding a track from a single. For you it has the correct album length of track 1.
Only Deezer seems to be swapping the album version for the single. Ironically the CD was originally pressed in Germany.
To my little brain Deezer has a different release to the other streaming services. So should be documented in the Release Group as a different version.
If you listen to the end of track six, and then the start of track seven is the same speech repeated? On my screenshot above you see 5:45 and 5:08 which is a combo of the UK and USA CDs… repeating a spoken section. Start playback at 4:45 on track six and then compare it to start of track 7. Especially note that fella talking at 5:08 on track 6.
A different tangent… back in 2021 when ATiscket was used to add the album to MB it was a 12 track album. I know this was the case as I found it odd enough to note the differences on the annotation as the artwork was showing the bonus track even though it was not on the web version.
Chumbawamba is one of my little specialist areas… And this digital chaos blows my mind trying to keep track of it.
BTW - this is me. Check edit histories. I was also trying to repair some of this today when I spotted the changes from 2021… and the hit a wall when I spotted the inconsistencies.
Start clicking on the various digital release links and watch track 6/7 change.
But on all of them, only Deezer gets track 1 swapped to the single.
I own the original 12 track UK CD. And also have a few other variations from other sources. Long ago I spotted the differences between Europe and USA editions and the cutting of track 6\7. Clean that up long ago.
(I’m also avoiding mentioning the variations of the track 1 single… a previously messy puzzle… caused by samples of a film on the album version that gets chopped from the single)
Sorry @IvanDobsky, I think I am going mad as well: I no longer understand my own post from two hours ago…
I could have sworn that I clicked your Deezer link (303383, 13 tracks) and looked that up, but I just noticed that the permalink which I gave in the same bullet point somehow is for 320964607 (12 tracks). No idea how I got to this release and why I didn’t even notice…
When I go the Deezer artist page, it also links 303383. Maybe I clicked on the other versions link on that Deezer release page?
At least Deezer doesn’t show a different release for the same URL in different regions (which I feared in my confusion).
So please ignore my permalinks, the one from @outsidecontext’s post is the relevant one.
It shows why the user should still check for discrepancies in the data before submitting a release, a barcode is not always reliable.
I would treat Deezer as a separate release for this example, so having multiple releases with barcode 724349523852 makes sense. Even three if they changed over time.
I’ve just looked closer, previously I only saw that at least two of them even had the same external links from the RG page (with the help of a userscript):
The insanity is purely in how Deezer gives you different copies of things at total random…
This morning I was quietly cleaning things up… and then madness took over when I looked at the small details as tracks appeared and disappeared and then swapped versions around depending on which direction I followed shop links.
I even tried going to the ARTIST page to check I was not just using some old archived link not accessible to public anymore.
You’ll see some of my notes on Digital Release I added this morning. Which are now already out of date.
Deezer changes tracks at inconsistently (1,2,6,7) but keeps the same URL. (Or maybe redirects)
Spotify seems to keep old URLs alive but hidden and same track lists, but then adds new URLs with updated track lists to find from the artist page.
iTunes seems to destroy old links to stop one getting confused.
I can only look from a UK angle. And then only as someone who can read text and numbers but not play a track.
I’ll get back to this with a clear head at some point soon. Would be curious what a European Deezer account holder hears with tracks 6 and 7. I bet they have a minute of the end of track six also on the start of track seven. It is the only way the lengths can make sense.
Meanwhile Track 1 of the album should start with a quote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStPlVn8D04 “I thought it mattered. I thought music mattered. But does it bollocks. Not compared to how people matter”. (Pete Postlethwaite, from the film Brassed Off) Which I guess upsets some people and got chopped from the single.
Yes, I note the different barcodes on these. I think most of my worry is really around the mess Deezer is currently making of their version of the 13 track edition.
And I repeat - this is not criticism of the tools as they just say what they see. I am glad it is not just me going mad
I don’t know exactly how relevant this is, but I want to discuss the inconsistency of Spotify:
Spotify also sometimes replaces album versions (in the album) with single or compilation edits. I notice it regularly, most recently yesterday. On Prince’s 1992 album [Love Symbol], track #2 is Sexy M.F. The original album version has a brief “oooh” at the beginning, which was removed on the single and compilation versions. However on the streaming version of the album, you will find the compilation edit. In some other examples, like you mentioned, the track will be replaced with a version minutes different in length.
All of this to say, Harmony and atisket are fantastic tools that handle these cases as well as possible it seems. My wish would be to able to see when something changes on a streaming release in the days followings its initial release e.g. when the cover artwork is changed (Release group “Miss You” by Oliver Tree & Robin Schulz - MusicBrainz) or when a track is removed for copyright reasons (can’t find my example right now).
It would be good to be able to document these odd errors. Well, I call them errors. It is a shop selling you a product that is different to what you think it is.
The Deezer example I found swaps a single and an album track. Maybe they don’t like swear words? Or more likely just don’t realise they have done it (see track 7) But this is a band long retired so won’t be chasing up these kinds of issues.
I have seen it before, but a much more bizarre case. A brand new Kasabian album was released in 2022. I bought the CD and ripped it. The digital editions all had swapped a track to a single edit. This even showed up in ISRC codes.
Didn’t see any mention on the digital shops or the CD that versions were different. And this was release day. (I added comment on Wikipedia that still seems to be there)
I can kinda understand how lazy swaps can happen on compilations. Just seems more annoying on an original album.
Sometimes as well songs get edited with (debatably) Artist Intent but the change is pushed immediately across streaming services without any obvious changes to the albums the track is featured on.
Two recent examples I can think of are the spoken line “Hey kids, spelling is fun” being removed from the Taylor Swift & Brendon Urie song Me!, and Lizzo changing lyrics to remove a word that is commonly used as a slur (outwith the US) from Grrrls.
Good luck with your Chumbawumba quest @IvanDobsky, I didn’t realise there was a designated edit of Tubthumping without the quote, I just figured it was cut off for radio play. Shout if you need another UK editor to verify streaming results for you to help mitigate the potential mind loss!
I find these changes interesting and worth noting. Those people who bought a CD will still have the original track as released, but all the streamers get their tracks edited without warning. The trouble is the data is not often known as to when the change occurred.
The length difference is quite large. With copyright clearance and swearies in the intro quote I can see why it got dropped from the single. (I have CDs of album and single versions)
Interesting to see a stage when compilations started to swap from using the single to the album version. It lets you recognise how some compilations are thrown together from an archive of tracks without checking.
Length makes them easy to separate. There is also a third edit as well for those compilations going for some aggressive time saving… and a fourth that is an album version with quote but instead the end is trimmed off. Those versions are fairly well split already as I fixed them years ago. The only vague ones are where compilations are added without any track lengths. album, single, shortened album edit, single with early fade
The weirdest part of the start of this thread is how each digital shop was selling a different version of the album. A silent decision of the shop’s, not the artist.
If you have Deezer, please load up https://www.deezer.com/en/album/303383 and play the last minute of track 6 and first minute of track 7. Would be nice to know if my theory was correct that this is repeated.
Sorry for all the waffling in this thread… it is these kinds of details that fascinate me. And only really visible when looking at a database like MB which records the facts.
I am spotting in the digitial shops, but I think needs documenting somehow.
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