How to add a songfight.org "release" properly?

As you can see here https://musicbrainz.org/release/a7dcc6fe-7f1b-4464-9449-26e171405f67 somebody added all the submissions by songfight.org user/musician “The Cow Exchange” from this page https://songfight.org/artistpage.php?key=cow_exchange where all the user submissions which happen to be in chronological order from oldest to newest, starting to add track 1 “Jimmy Hat” (the oldest track released on 2004-08-16) up to the latest track 13 “Saving Throw” (the latest track released on 2006-05-29). All these tracks were released at different dates. Is it possible to add individual date data for each track? I checked the metadata for “Jimmy Hat” and it doesn’t say anywhere it’s “Track 1”.
Do you consider this correct?

I’m trying to learn how to enter data in MusicBrainz and I’m unsure of some stuff. Thanks for reading! I wish I could enter the proper date information as found in the artist song link, where every different track was released on a different date.

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Hi internetofdata.
I’m being a non-official, low skill level, volunteer helper here.
Sounds like you want to change that release into a series of stand alone recordings (SARs).
Have a read of How_to_Add_Standalone_Recordings

I haven’t made any standalone recordings yet and I’m wondering what benefits you see in having the Cow Exhange’s songs separated rather than in a release? As I say I don’t know much about SARs and what you propose may be in line with the usual approach. Though it might not be.

I’d try it and see what happens; worse case is that other editors will explain why they do something else. :smile:

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If you click on each of the titles, you get a summary of that competition listing each submission – “Cur” on The Cow Exchange’s page is actually their submission to Cur. I would make a release for each current track, but with each of the other competitors as the other tracks on it. Not sure what to do for the numbering, though.

In general, though, unless something is clearly a sketch, I’ll represent a digital artist’s (Soundcloud, say) library as comprised of many singles – even WIPs may just be given “Demo” status. Losing the release date is too much of a sacrifice, in my mind.

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On this page SONG FIGHT ARCHIVE! one can find all the competition songs for “Cur”. I’d like to take Cur as an example on how to add a songfight release(with a working example I could use that as basis when adding similar releases). Could “Cur” be the release name or what do you think?(I’d love to get feedback on this) Do you have any ideas on what the release name could be?

I assume that the track by “Blind Mime Ensemble” which for me shows at the top of the page could be “Track 1” of this release? And track 15 could be the song by “You Pour A Pearl”?

The release date I assume is on or after September 13 2004?(or near that date?) So far with my own experience a song fight has an end date, and maybe 0-3 days after it has ended the submissions phase end and the organizers publish the songs with a cover and make them available for voting. Then they make public the upcoming title for the next song.

What do you mean with what I ‘propose’? Is this what I propose: ?

I wish I could enter the proper date information as found in the artist song link, where every different track was released on a different date

By the way it seems the Editor has been deleted that added the release we are discussing. (release a7dcc6fe-7f1b-4464-9449-26e171405f67)

On another topic(still regarding songfight though) if you want you can also give some input on what you think of this “Song Fight!” label. What I know Song Fight is not an official label and entering it as a label I believe is entering data incorrectly into the database. Do you have an opinion on this?(cause I could be wrong, maybe it is a label and I just didn’t know about it)

shnizzedy is the user that added “Song Fight!” as a label but I cannot find any argumentation or source of why it is a label. If anybody knows if Song Fight should be or shouldn’t be a label, please let me know of your opinion.

I’m interested in feedback and I thank you for participating in this thread that I have opened. I didn’t see any other threads about songfight.org releases so I thought let’s solve this mystery once and for all, maybe we can come up with some general help guidelines for when I add a songfight release.

On one hand, it seems like Song Fight! is the entity publishing the music (which, at the core, is what labels do). OTOH, this also seems like a series of releases(/competitions), so maybe it would be more appropriate to do a Song Fight! series.

Or you could just do both for now and see what happens. :man_shrugging: :innocent:

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Ok sure, I don’t object. I was just brainstorming. Yeah I guess Song Fight! is a label then.

I’m having a problem. MusicBrainz won’t let me add this Song Fight! various artists release named Zero Gravity.

Song Fight(the competition or the Song Fight! “label”) works by the site itself choosing a title and then lets artists make their music based on the same title and then each artist have some time to make their song.

The release “Zero Gravity” has 9 tracks and they all have the same title: “Zero Gravity”. I assume that the MusicBrainz software thinks that I’ve added the information incorrectly because of identical titles for all songs(but with different artists).

Tracklist is shown in red with the error message being

You must enter a title and select an artist for every track.

I did select the artists for each track and the title as stated above is identical for all tracks. That’s just the way Song Fight! releases are.(not all of them ie. not Song Fight! XMAS Cover Fight)

This is the full tracklist as I’ve attempted to add it but ultimately failed:
01 - Zero Gravity - Berkeley Social Scene - 3:45
02 - Zero Gravity - Friends of Olaf - 2:30
03 - Zero Gravity - King Arthur - 3:27
04 - Zero Gravity - Lichen Throat - 2:27
05 - Zero Gravity - Micah Sommersmith - 4:45
06 - Zero Gravity - My Social Uniform - 4:06
07 - Zero Gravity - Thanks for the frisbee - 2:52
08 - Zero Gravity - Vom Vorton - 3:19
09 - Zero Gravity - zczero - 2:00

It does not let me add this release and I don’t know what to do next or if I’ve done something wrong and should do something different. It does not let me click on Enter edit and tells me to do something about the Tracklist(which is in “baby pink” color / #f4c2c2) but I stop there cause I don’t know what to do. Sorry for repeating myself. Thanks for your time reading this

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Sounds like you’re maybe hitting MBS-9292. Did you try a second a time? Some people have reported on IRC that they get this issue if any of the artist credits end with a trailing space, so maybe check for that?

Sorry, I was in a hurry and didn’t add the artists correctly. Now I’ve added all the artists. What I learnt is I shouldn’t attempt to rush adding any releases but instead take my time. No errors now.

I’ve finally added the release without any errors: https://musicbrainz.org/release/18260481-5567-4f8d-983f-c732a57a68fe
If you have any feedback it is welcome. I did make a spelling error where track 1 got Zero Gravit. I attempted to correct it by adding a ‘y’ in the end. I think it got added.

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In this edit(which was opened on 2006-05-09, which is also about 11 years ago) there is an Edit note by HatAndThat regarding Song Fight! entries/releases:

Organizing Song Fight entries as discussed here: http://musicbrainz.org/showmod.html?modid=3320840

Does anybody know what the page looked like? Is it gone forever? wayback.archive.org didn’t have that page archived.

Also after discovering an artist called “Hoblit” I realized a whole lot of “Song Fight!” releases from around 2001-2002 had been added a long time ago and the Status field for those releases were set to “promotional” while my most recent additions for such releases have the Status field set to official. Which is the most accurate way? promotional or official? Would appreciate any input cause maybe that long gone discussion page had already that documented there, who knows. Thanks in advance!

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Having read your post with care and deliberation this time I am confident that, “Making the old forums accessible again is on Bitmap’s (MetaBrainz Senior Developer) non-high priority to-do-list”.

Apologies for last time.

http://musicbrainz.org/showmod.html?modid=3320840 then is equivalent to Edit #3320840 - MusicBrainz now, so you can see the discussion there.

There is apparently a redirect for old edit pages, but for some reason it isn’t working:

My next release to check is probably gonna be: I Don’t Like Eggplant. I assume it is problematic to some degree. One of the track titles is different.

Would you consider this an album or an unknown release? I Don’t Like Crowds

I can’t make up my mind about it. As far as I know songfight.org just publishes fights and then archives them after being moved from SONG FIGHT ARCHIVE! to a more permanent archival directory like ie. SONG FIGHT ARCHIVE!

Do I set a primary group for the release-group of a songfight.org release? For “I Don’t Like Crowds” I just left it as unset. Usually I set it to album but after watching an old edit from 2005 and there was a point by dcflyer:

All of your additions are NOT albums; they are non-album tracks from the above mentioned website.

Fuchs thinks it’s an album though(I made some parts of it bold, the original didn’t have bold characters)

@bnw, that’s the reason why I was asking it. So again, is this Kompressor the same as “our” Kompressor? I don’t care that much about whether this is added as an album or not (in my opinion it is one), but the more important issue of an adding mod is not to create a map that needs complicated cleanup later. :wink:

What do you think? Should I leave songfight dot org group-releases Primary Type unset or should I make them an “Album” or “Other”?

I’m also unsure of the status field. Usually I set it to Official but when I think about it with a NPOV I get very unsure, so what I do for now is just leave the Status value unset as well.

Edit: I’m going to add the subsequent post and integrate it into this post so I’m thus going to delete the subsequent empty post. The goal is to reference this specific post each time I make some songfight.org edit so that people can discuss it here instead in the separate edits unless they are truly relevant to the separate edits.

Well ok, until somebody objects I think “Album” is actually the proper way to tag them. Anybody objecting?

The above sentence was posted on Dec 1, 2017 10:34 pm

I’m also setting the status to Official.

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Just wanted to give you some encouragement, I think you’re doing a great job! As long as you enter everything consistently and with good links you can’t really go wrong.

In terms of release date I would just keep in mind that MB basically stores data that is a snapshot in time.
“this CD was released on this date and it looked like this at that time”.
So please don’t worry about adding a songfight ‘release’ of all the tracks with the date that the final song was added.
Digital releases can definitely get complicated, here’s a good example of a release that changed a lot and I wanted to store the changes: https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/42dd9002-9fe7-42f2-a0db-e7c9cd0c5748

Technically you could add single releases for each individual track with its release date, or add a new release for each date adding an extra track until you’ve added them all (definite overkill!!), but personally I would just copy the date information into the annotation and be done with it.

In my opinion it becomes an album (or compilation or EP or whatever, but certainly a release) because they’ve made cover art for some sets of tracks. It seems to me like that means they then expect it to be ‘consumed’ as a package.
Also in a practical sense if it’s convenient for them to group tracks on a page it seems to me like that would be useful for us too. An argument could be made for using standalone recordings and a series instead, but not if there’s album art and clear release dates imo.

Unless you have reason to think otherwise (eg they don’t have the right to release a song/it’s a bootleg) I would say they are official releases.

And remember, you’re putting in the work, so you’re the expert :slight_smile:

Edit: wow, I did not realize the scale of these releases:
https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=song+fight&type=release&method=indexed
It would be a good idea to look through the existing ones before deciding what to do: I would expect all the releases to be added in the same way throughout MusicBrainz, and it looks like there’s a lot of work if you want to make changes. It seems like they agreed on a style at some point based on HatAndThat’s comment.

This discussion certainly is interesting
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/3320840
I find it especially interesting that anyone wouldn’t want these/wouldn’t consider these an official release… times have changed and if each set had a bandcamp page we would have no problem at all!

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Yes. From page 1 to page 5 in that huge list I see “Song Fight!” releases. I almost thought we had 985 pages of “Song Fight!” releases :slight_smile: but after a more careful examination I think they are from page 1 to 5 and not all of them are “Song Fight!” releases, but many of them are.

I see that HatAndThat references in some edits 4767688(Opened:
2006-05-09 00:55 UTC), 4748402(Opened:
2006-05-06 09:12 UTC) that discussion.
I didn’t see any consensus, I interpreted it mostly like how my thread went that was about notability requirements for releases.
I’d understand consensus better if we agreed on some sort of ‘guide on how to add a songfight release’ and you’ll see some of my work a few lines below.

Below I’m trying to solve the songfight ‘how to add releases’ issue “once and for all”:

I don’t believe I can add perfect releases but I can document how I add releases and then ask for feedback. I’ll make it so this specific post can be edited countless times to adapt to feedback and it’s gonna be written like a “guide” so that everything is documented and that everything can be questioned and replaced.(and newbies who would be helped by “hand holding” can benefit too)

Disclaimer: This is a draft and it’s highly likely it’s unfinished when I send it. I just want to brainstorm a bit here that’s why I’ll send early unfinished versions.

How to add a Song Fight! release to MusicBrainz (= how I do it currently until I get your feedback how to do it in a better way):

If we can make “I Don’t Like Crowds” into a “perfect MusicBrainz songfight.org release”, we can reference back to that release so that all editors who add “Song Fight!” releases can reference to that one so everyone who adds “Song Fight!” releases know how to add future releases. Anyway here is the guide:

  1. Go to Log in - MusicBrainz
  2. Enter the title of the release. Take this release “I Don’t Like Crowds” as an example. I Don’t Like Crowds is in bold on that webpage. Put that in the “Title:” field in MusicBrainz.
  3. The release group field should have been automatically filled in with exactly the same title as in the “Title:” field.
  4. Set “Primary Type:” to “Album
  5. Set the “Secondary Type” to “Compilation” (Thanks for the feedback aerozol. I still accept feedback and everybody is welcome to give any)
  6. Set the “Status:” field to “Official”.
  7. Set the Language and Script fields with the help from this page on how to add a release
  8. Date: Using the same example from earlier “I Don’t Like Crowds” you see the date values that songfight dot org publishes them in: “11/22/17 - 11/30/17”. Their format is MM/DD/YY(Month, Day, Year). Put the date in the 3 date fields like this: “Date: 2017, 11 and 30”. (ok, I decided to add the later date after I received feedback from aerozol(thx!) 2017-11-30. If anybody has more feedback it is welcome!)
  9. Set “Country:” field to “[Worldwide]”
  10. In the “Label:” field add “Song Fight!” and when the “Song Fight!” text comes up among many other label suggestions click on “Song Fight!”. Then it says “You selected Song Fight!.” If it links to SONG FIGHT! - MusicBrainz you selected the right label.
    10.1. Set the “Cat. No:” field to “[none]
  11. You click on “This release does not have a barcode
  12. The “Packaging:” field you set to “None
  13. In the “Annotation:” field, thanks to feedback with an actual edit by aerozol, you add(in this example taken from the example release “I Don’t Like Crowds”)

11/22/17 - 11/30/17
winner: Jeff Travis Henderson
total votes: 44

Jeff Travis Henderson may not like crowds but the crowd of voters like him!

You will find this information on the release page once the release has been archived.
14. Add a link that links to the appropriate release page, in the “I Don’t Like Crowds” release it would be: SONG FIGHT ARCHIVE! and set it to “download for free”.

I’ve edited it now thanks to feedback from aerozol. This is still an unfinished version…the guide is still missing information on how exactly to add new artists, whether they should have links to songfight artist pages or not has not yet been explored. I’m going to save this so it is not in draft form and then continue working on this to add more steps to the guide

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Looks good, my notes:

Yes. Though you could argue for compilation, the tracks haven’t been published anywhere else except as a ‘single’ mp3.

This is the only thing I disagree with.
If you want to add all the tracks as a release in MB, you have to add the date where they all existed together (the release) in that form. So it can’t be before the date of the last recording. If you use the date of the first recording it would be a 1 track release.
I would use the last date available on the SongFight! page.

You can also write [none] into the cat. no field if you like.

I would put any useful information in here that you can’t put into a MB field (mainly because you wanted to store individual track dates when possible). I have added an example to I Don’t Like Crowds

Great work, if you can post instructions like these to the SongFight! forums and its users are motivated perhaps you’ll manage to get those 5 pages of releases put into this format :wink:

I have added a comment with a link to this discussion to: Edit #3320840 - MusicBrainz
In case anyone is still around and wants to pitch in.

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Maybe this post is superfluous but I’ve adapted the guide to the feedback

I’ve marked this post as seen above. Thanks for your feedback and for the suggestions!

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I agree now(with your comments) after considering what happened with the last songfight release “Sacred Coward”. They had a “glitch” so some had to submit their songs again which means that some songs will be added later to the release even though the temporary release can be found at SONG FIGHT ARCHIVE!

The release date for that release is “12/03/17 - 12/11/17” which means 2017-12-03 - 2017-12-11. They don’t always release their releases on the end date but they do sometimes(I’ve not been part of this project much so I don’t know) make the releases a few days after the later date(2017-12-11). I’m used to them releasing them on the currentsong.php page and usually all songs appear by then though this time after this glitch I’m wondering whether more songs will be added to that release. I don’t know, I guess it’s a wait and see approach.

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I was not finished with my guide(maybe the reason is the last time I edited it was 4 months ago? I assume that’s probably the reason). I attempted to edit my guide post but somehow couldn’t(I also found it hard to find the “source” for the guide, so I had to enter all links manually again using the [] and () symbols). For now the guide is here(and it is possible to view the source text by clicking on “view source”, unfortunately that is reddit formatted text because discourse text would not display). It’s on the wiki section of a subreddit I created called “/r/MusicBrainzSongFight”. I don’t think it’s that important where something is hosted although I assume it is more relevant here. Can anybody please wikify my guide? As it is now I think it is still relevant to post any feedback here, but if you must you can also post feedback/questions etc. on the subreddit itself I created: /r/MusicBrainzSongFight which can be used temporarily I guess until a better solution is found.

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