In the Uk at least many bands do still release singles
2 Likes
Can you be more specific who are those people who believe that direct feeds from Commercial Businesses that clearly are not interested in consistency would give a Community Driven project that is driven by data quality more credibility ? Another Commercial Business ? Academia ? Some newsgroup ?
We’re all ‘hardcore’ users (in one way or another) if we’re in the forums, but surely we can agree that there are people (and orgs/programs/sites) out there who look at MB, see that it’s got less on it than Discogs, and leave and don’t ever look back.
Having low quality data is better than nothing, but duplicates and all that crap that’s harder to tidy isn’t.
I wonder if MB could charge a fee to bigger labels for editors to clean their data and add it… if we’re confident having a release in MB provides value. p.s. 
2 Likes
Last time I remember that we had a huge batch of automatically added releases was in 2014: Tag “likedis auto” - MusicBrainz
It was not really that bad, it is even maybe positive as it added many small artists.
It consisted of importing releases from artist.cdjournal.com which is a rather good source.
But automatic import has its flaws that we are still fixing 7 yeas later, like singles with missing karaoke tracks, tracklist not as printed, bad release group type, etc.
2 Likes
I am not suggesting just dumping in a load of new releases directly into MusicBrainz without verificaction, I envisaged them being either loaded into MusicBrainz but marked with some flag so they that are not visible by default each one would have to be converted into a release once checked by an editor, or loading them into a MusicBrainz Import database and then users could check them and import them.
But the reason I think this would be a good idea, is firstly that the labels do know better than MusicBrainz editors when they are about to release new albums, and it would give much better coverage of new releases. Secondly even if the data has errors it is surely easier to modify an existing release that is nearly right than to add all that data manually in the first place.
And after all we have plenty of scripts that are used to seed releases already from various websites, but this still requires you to find the release on another website, check release not alrealy in MusicBrainz, and dont add in the performer credits for you so you end up with the only the basic information unless you are prepared to do further manually editing.
2 Likes
I understand your wish for more up to date entries, there aren’t many who wouldn’t like that. But I do not share your opinion that bad entry is better than none because it is easier to correct later.
Corrections always (for regular editors, not the super ones) go thru the voting process which can take 6 or 7 days. So when I tag a new release and it is badly incorrect, I spend time correcting it and then I have to wait for a week before I can actually use it.
In the other scenario, a release I want is not in the database, I uses various users scripts to add it, make an effort that editing is correct and I can use it immediately.
It takes me 15 minutes or so to add a new simple release OR I need to correct an existing release and wait 7 days before it’s effective.
I’m all for a volume, off page, API style new releases adds - but on MBNZ terms.
After all Discogs already exists (I don’t think they have API feed from labels either) and one can use Discogs as they have more releases and get them quicker that MBNZ. I tried and had to say thank you, but not good enough.
3 Likes
It’s indeed more difficult to check and fix stuff, it’s boring too.
It would be difficult to find editors willing to review tons of label provided data, rather than working, as usual, on their collection of favourite artists.
2 Likes
You are obviously an experienced editor and this would not prevent you continuing you adding your releases as you currently do, but for casual editors its much more difficult and time consuming. I occasionally add releases to MusicBrainz and have done over many years but I can never remember the details of the various scripts. Users who are not particularly interested in MusicBrainz but are interested in good metadata (e.g roon users) are always finding MusicBrainz entry unfathomable. For my part I add releases with release seeding but not performer credits because takes too long, you may consider that a bad entry but it is better than not having the release at all, and if there was a way to preseed the credits I would use it.
And in your example it doesnt take 7 days to enter the information, just 7 days to wait for the data, very different. Im not recommending adding super bad entries but tigerman said
so someone could be selective about feeds and just take good ones.
Regarding Discogs, they tend to concentrate on physical releases so not so good for the shift to digital releases.
3 Likes
Well if noone is interested in then they don’t get done, but that is no different to releases not being there currently because no interested enough to have done them, but I am sure there are many editors who have favourite labels not just favourite artists.
2 Likes
But it was that bad. Likedis deleted all karaoke tracks from Japanese singles. If you’re familiar with Japanese singles, then you know why this is massively bad data.
3 Likes
I completely agree, @yindesu:
Oh but I meant more harm than good but I meant this for physical releases.
If this topic is about digital releases, please never mind my remarks, I’m still only interested in physical releases.
1 Like
Sorry if I was not clear enough, it does not take 7 days to correct data, it takes 7 days for the correction to show up on the page and database.
We are looking at the incorrect entry from a different point of view, possibly because we have diff musical interests ? Who knows.
In the Classical and Jazz releases, if there are no Artists credits per track and if the Classical Work does not use catalogue entries (if available) then I try to fill this gap. I have a favourite useless entry
In Jazz, I really need to know who plays bass on a Miles Davis Quintet Album…
So far MBNZ is a refuge for me from sloppy db schemas, lack of reference data, everything goes kind of environments that have been propagated by sloppy internet data.
I hope it will stay like that.
BTW, I’m not an experienced editor, far from it.
1 Like
No I understand, although I think if you are adding data rather than correcting it the edits are applied immediately, and yes performers credits are key for Jazz.
But to reiterate I wasn’t discussing about my particular music tastes I was suggesting that MusicBrainz does not have a good system for getting new digital releases into the system. Whereas Jaxsta now have a system whereby many record labels are feeding them with new release data and their database is growing rapidly. Their metadata is not as good as MusicBrainz, but it seems they have gained alot with minimal effort. If MusicBrainz could ulitize labels feed AND community moderation/editing the database would be both more complete and more accurate than the current situation which relies on editing only, and doesnt offer a way to import performer credits.
2 Likes
If separately named bots were allocated specifically to each label that used automated data, then it would be easier to keep track of the quality and source of that data. If that label started adding bad data, they’d have a pattern we can spot and correct. If they were too consistently bad then they can be stopped like any other editor. Editors could subscribe to these label-bots to keep an eye on them.
7 Likes
So we make edits immediate for a month if it’s a release that’s been added from a automatic list.
I’m not advocating for adding a bunch of junk data, at all - but let’s be honest, experienced editors in MB will be using automatic importers for digital anyway. I don’t think it’s a huge leap to think of a scenario where the labels can submit the info direct.
Maybe a distributor (a limit number of sites you have to use to get onto Spotify etc) would be interested in providing a checkbox to their customers like ‘also submit this release to musicbrainz’. E.g. distrokid
Note that I think this would be cool and definitely possible, but it’s a dream where there is dev time available to make all the changes necessary to make it smooth 
(doubt it?)
PS
Maybe I need to start selling my services to labels 
I remember there was an editor who had on their profile they sometimes added stuff for pay… I can’t remember who.
2 Likes
Do you have in mind an official labels to MBNZ API bots or just scrapping bots ?
I don’t think there is anything to stop people to write a Selenium python bot, is there ? Except for good data source of course and some python tinkering.
1 Like
Yes, I agree. I’ve even asked if there was a way to have a-tisket or just a script for Jaxsta. Unfortunately, they recently went to a pay model though. Now you have to pay $50 a year to access the information that contains barcodes & cat #s, even though many labels (UMG distributed mostly) don’t provide any information that differentiates the release from one another. Their links to Apple Music & Spotify on releases are almost always wrong (they link all releases in a relaese group (variants) to the same links regardless of barcode for example, even on Sony links) so should be ignored.
1 Like
I just saw the notes above about needing a “special flag” to say that these were from some special source. Seems easier to me to just have them sourced from known editors \ bots. That way you can look at the whole history of that editor\bot and see other Releases from the same label. So if a mistake is spotted in how data was being entered it is then easy to fix.
If it is a representative of the label doing the edits, then just put the label into the editor’s name to show they are official.
(Oh - and you make me laugh with MBNZ as it looks like MusicBrainz (New Zealand) to me 
)
1 Like
Also, every single release date on Jaxsta is 1 day off. Weird, but true.
1 Like
You maybe right about barcodes but you can sign up for Jaxsta Core, this is free and allows you to access performer relations
As for the api itself I expressed an interest in the api and now I have to have a phone conversation with them, and then apparently sign an NDA before I can get access to the api, so not looking promising.
But to reiterate the discussion was not about getting data from Jaxsta, it was making the point that if Jaxsta can get labels feed then can MusicBrainz get label feeds.
4 Likes