How to handle Spotify releases with differing titles depending on the country?

Sometimes a Japanese Spotify release will have both a Japanese title and an English title, depending on where you are using Spotify. The songs usually aren’t separate releases, but I think they are considered separate entities by Spotify (it is possible to add, like, and listen to the JP and EN releases separately).

For these releases, should I add the English title as a pseudo-release or as a separate official release?

Note: After some testing, only some releases count as separate entities, others have separate titles - and both versions can be in the same playlist - but they counted as the same song.
(I’m bringing this up just in case it’s a factor in deciding the difference between a pseudo and regular release.)

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I would add it as an official release, like I did for Omaru Polka’s EverBlue (or エヴァーブルー). in addition, be sure to add the official English title as a release group alias, and link the two with a Translation/Transliteration relationship, like I did with the above.

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This brings up another question (that I have avoided…) is that Spotify and Apple etc support localized artist names as well. So the same releases at a JP url will have different credits. Definitely the ‘same release’, but MB doesn’t have a good way of handling it without duping releases.

Anyway, to your question, I think an official release with the appropriate country/s set as the release location :+1:

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Pseudo-releases are the way that transl(iter)ated track titles and artist credits have always been handled.

These releases typically have different barcodes, and so should be a different release anyway.

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Which one do you set as official?

p.s. as I said, MB doesn’t have a good way to handle it without duping (e.g. adding a dupe release, inc. pseudo-releases) releases

Edit #83350613

" reosarevok10/7/2021, 2:27:11 AM

There seems to be a perfectly official, existing version with transliterated titles, so having it as Official seems correct. . Whether there should still be a separate pseudo-release or not, I don’t know - this pseudo release has slightly different titles than the 7digital version, so we could have two releases, the pseudo and the official."

Which country would I set for an English release with a different barcode?

If it’s a different barcode then just run it through atisket.pulsewidth.org.uk and add all the countries it shows up for there. Unless I’m missing something :grin:

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If they had the same barcode, would I set the actual release to the countries where the main title appears (for Japanese titles, its usually only Japan), and set the pseudo-release(s) with the translated/transliterated titles to only the countries that those titles appear in?

The purpose of the pseudo-release is to only replace the text that has been translated or transliterated:
https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Specific_types_of_releases/Pseudo-Releases

So no, pseudo-releases should normally have no release countries at all.

How to use pseudo-releases:

  1. In Picard, load the original release. This populates fields like the release date, medium format, barcode, etc. You can unset the text that you can’t read if you want. Then save.
  2. In Picard, load the pseudo-release. This should only change the language or script of certain fields. Then save.

This allows pseudo-releases to be widely reusable.

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I’ve run into a problem when adding these releases when they have differing barcodes.
In cases where Spotify has two releases, one for Japan and one for outside countries, usually one is in Japanese and the other in English or romaji.

Sometimes the Apple Music releases will use the barcode for the English release while being in Japanese (when switching the url to JP). As I understand, the titles from Apple Music + the original release country is what should be entered. I don’t think adding both Spotify releases in Japanese would be accurate, so I’m not sure what to do for these.

This is the latest example:

JP Spotify link // a-tisket link w/ preferred vendor: Spotify
This barcode only appears on Spotify. It uses the Japanese title and artist credit.

Non-JP Spotify link // a-tisket link w/ preferred vendor: Spotify
This barcode is used for the Spotify, Deezer, and Apple Music releases. On Spotify, it excludes Japan (not sure why a-tisket doesn’t detect this unless you set the preferred vendor to iTunes) but the other two stores include Japan.
The Spotify and Deezer releases with this barcode uses the transl(iter)ated title, but Apple Music uses the Japanese.

These type of releases also make me unsure of the other differing Spotify releases where the Apple Music release didn’t have an attached barcode. For these I added them to the JP Spotify release, but depending on how I should enter these I might have to change them…

Anyways, any help with these cases is very much appreciated.

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Depending on your location it might be useful to test this with a proxy or something that gives you a Japan based IP. I got very confused for a bit when I found out that Spotify etc sometimes swaps things out based on your location (definitely artist name, not sure about track titles though).

iTunes makes it easy by letting you swap out the prefix. This might impact whether you want to make a new release or not.

When I came across some of those stuff I actually gave up entering some of those releases ‘properly’ (another ‘I’ll wait as long as it takes for alternate tracklists’ situation). Good though for me to tag, and move on :grimacing:

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