How to enter titles if actual content does not match what's listed on the cover?

Hi,

I am currently struggling with how to properly enter titles for two promotional (as in: handed to local radio stations) albums, namely “Edguy - Hellfire Club” (Edguy – Hellfire Club (2004, CD) - Discogs) and “Brainstorm - Soul Temptation” (Brainstorm – Soul Temptation (2003, CD) - Discogs).

The Edguy album has the track listing of the regular album on the back, i.e.

  1. Mysteria
  2. The Piper Never Dies
  3. Lucifer in Love
  4. The Spirit Will Remain

However, the first track on the disc is actually a spoken intro and the subsequent tracks are shifted by 1 position (i.e. Mysteria is #2, The Piper Never Dies is #3, and so on). Track 10 is completely missing and all tracks have voice-over from the singer, explaining the content of the songs. Should I enter the tracks as printed (i.e. with incorrect number) and explain the differences in the annotation field? Or should I enter the actual tracks (i.e. not as printed) and explain the differences in the annotation field? Should I suffix all title names with " (voiceover)"? Or should I suffix all title names with " (edit)"?

The Brainstorm album has all regular tracks but contains 10 more tracks that are short radio announcements in different languages, advertising the album (something along the lines of “Hi, this is Andy from Brainstorm and you are listening to the best radio in town. Buy our new album now!”). Should I enter those as “[unknown]” and add a corresponding note to the annotation field? Should I try to guess the language and add that to the title?

Happy to receive your input.

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  1. You should change the titles if the audio data differs from the printed tracklist:
    Style / Principle / Error correction and artist intent - MusicBrainz
  2. If there are untitled tracks for which the titles cannot be known, then see Style / Unknown and untitled / Special purpose track title - MusicBrainz
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welcome to MusicBrainz!~

as yindesu said, you should enter the tracklist as it actually is on the CD, not on the back. I’d probably leave the track titles as they appear on the release (i.e. without “(voiceover)” or the like), and add a disambiguation to the recordings, something like “promo version with voice-over”. that way it’s less likely to get merged into the studio album recordings.

it’s fairly common for releases to have misspellings and other errors. as long as you explain that corrections have been made, you should be good~ :wink:


for the second release, I might enter the titles as something more descriptive, like [radio insert] or the like, maybe include the language in the title as well, i.e. [German radio insert] or [radio insert, Deutsch]. there might be an actual name for these clips, but I’m not too familiar with radio terminology :sweat_smile:

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Thank you for the quick replies and your thoughts and references. Somehow I missed the first style guide.

I think I have a clear picture now. The radio whatever-you-name-it are listed as “station ids” on the back cover but that seems clearly wrong. Maybe “radio jingle” fits.

no problemo, my guy~

if they’re titled on the back, you should probably just use those titles then. and anyways, “Station ID” seems to be correct, there’s even a Wikipedia page on them. “Jingle” makes me think of a short musical soundbite, which it doesn’t sound like these are. (granted, in the US, both of these usually include the frequency and/or callsign, but it might be different in Europe or wherever this was released)

either way, I’ll leave that decision up to you~ :wink:

“Listed on the back” was probably a bit exaggerated. There is a small note in the bottom left saying “This CD contains also station ids and further promotional info (…) as CD-ROM part” (discogs has a picture).

I’ve seen the wikipedia page, but from the article I understand that station ids would be more like self-advertisements of radio stations (including their name) while the tracks on the album are more targeted at advertising the album (at least the two or three languages I actually understand). Given the fact that I probably won’t be able to identify all different languages anyway I might also opt to go with “[unknown]” after all. Better have no information than incorrect information I guess.

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