How to differentiate album special editions

MusicBrainz
1

Hi, I’m a new user. I set up Beets to correct my metadata, which uses MusicBrainz. I have a question about how to differentiate different album editions, for example:

  • Special Edition
  • Limited Edition
  • xth Anniversary Edition

But there may be many more variants. For example, some ONE OK ROCK albums come in Japanese and International/English versions. This is in a way related to the release country, but it’s not really the same release in different countries, but different releases in different regions. So in my library, I like to store this as, e.g.,

  • ONE OK ROCK - Ambitions [Japanese version]
  • ONE OK ROCK - Ambitions [international version]

When I look on the ONE OK ROCK page, I see that, indeed, these two versions are listed separately, but the version is not part of the title, but light gray. What field is the database pulling this version information from? It is my understanding it must be the an album Disambiguation Comment, specifically a [release]? Is that correct? When I go to edit the page, I do see the Disambiguation field filled out, but how is it specified that this is specifically a [release] disambiguation (and not [work], [recording])?

If I use Beets, I suppose I need to take the disambiguation comment field, look for the [release] comment, then add that to my titles? I understand this is not the Beets forum, but does anyone have a setup like this who is willing to share their code so I can understand how to do this better?

Next, I also noticed this setup is not always consistent. For example, consider the album “Let Go” by Avril Lavigne. Here I find many releases, some of which are the “20th anniversary edition.” For most, this has been entered in the disambiguation field, but for the last entry, it has been put in the title field instead. And the disambiguation field for that release contains “360 Reality Audio Mix.” I suppose this is also a disambiguation, but should this not be a [recording] disambiguation, with the [release] being “20th anniversary edition”? But again, it is unclear to my how these types are separated. And in this case, it’s just been put in the title?

If I run my script, how can I then pull the correct release version (i.e., “20th anniversary edition”) to format my album correctly like so:

  • Avril Lavigne - Let Go [20th anniversary edition]

Another strange example is “amo (japan tour edition)” by Bring Me the Horizon. Here we find “(japan tour edition)” put in the title field, but also “special edition released in japan for tour” put in the disambiguation field. How messy. How should I parse all this info to get to a clean result?:

  • Bring Me the Horizon - amo [Japan tour edition]

To me it seems like the disambiguation field is itself ambiguous in its use. Very often, bands will release certain special editions of albums, usually featuring some extra tracks. I would expect there to be a single field to specify the edition. E.g., a field called ‘edition’ which would contain ‘special edition’, ‘tour edition’, ‘10th anniversary version’, etc. And then for different recordings a different field, e.g., ‘recording’ containing things like ‘360 reality audio mix’. But it seems this is not how things are setup currently?

I hope someone can help me with this so that I can consistently pull the correct release (edition) information for my albums.

2

I use this to add a Release Disambiguation to my album titles.

$set(album,%album%$if(%_releasecomment%, \(%_releasecomment%\),))

As to picking the “correct” release, usually need to manually select the release to pair your files to by Right Click on the album in the right panel and select “Other Versions” from the menu.

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There are also going to be a few occasions where you still need to manually edit an album title. You can do this in the lower right hand pane by directly editing the text that Picard will use.

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And yes, the disambiguation field can be a little ambiguous at times. Also confused more by some releases putting “Deluxe Edition” on the cover which means it is part of the title. There is no perfect solution to this one.

1 Like
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Yes, in Picard I managed to make it work, but I also tried Beets and I thought maybe people had experience with that as well. And it was still quite manual; why do I sometimes have to add the edition to the album title field myself and sometimes not?

About “Deluxe Edition” being part of a title just because it appears on the cover, I really disagree there. Many things can appear on a cover, doesn’t mean it’s part of the title. If an album is released once, and then later again with a few extra songs and “Special Edition” on the cover, I think the title of the release should still just be the original name, and “Special Edition” is, as the word says itself, an “edition” specifier. It’s kind of the same with track lists showing “ft. xxxx” along track titles, but that’s not part of the title, but rather just listing an additional track artist.

I am still confused about Disambiguation Comment field. When I look in the documentation, it gives examples of different kinds of sub-fields (it seems):

  • [work]
  • [release]
  • [recording]

But when I go to edit a release, I see just the single “Disambiguation” field. How am I 1) supposed to specify the disambiguation type, and 2) supposed to pull only the type I want from the field when using Picard/Beets?

4

Sorry, my only experience of beets are the purple things I cook.

Issues like that have long been in debates. The currently agreed system take a title as what is seen as entered by the artist on the cover. And if a title does not show (deluxe edition) on the cover, then it goes to a disambig.

Not really the same as “ft. xxxx” as that is more to do with how MB likes to add all artists as artists and not part of the track title.

If you want to tweak and change either of these in your music tags, this is where the scripting comes in with tagging in Picard.

Each of these have their own separate disambiguation field. Personally I have another script that will put disamig comments on my recordings too.

I am one of those people who turn scripts on and off as I only tag one album at a time. I don’t have the mega scripts that allow complex updating of hundreds of albums in one click.

You need to see MusicBrainz as a central database of information with agree standards on data entry. We then all have the ability to take that data and tweak it as we need in our own tags.

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