I originally started editing MusicBrainz to get Japanese artists and songs on setlist.fm. This includes adding release (group)s and works, which often contain a mix of Latin and Japanese titles. Aliases are nice for within MusicBrainz but they do not cover everything and Setlist.fm does not support them for importing albums and works. This leads me to my question.
Some albums are released on streaming with identical music but different titles in different countries. For example, the album RIDE by Subway Daydream has two Japanese-language song titles on Apple Music JP but these are translated to English on Apple Music US. Everything else is identical, including the album ID and the links to individual songs. Should these be treated as two separate digital media releases within the same release group (one Japan and one US or perhaps international)? Should one, in this case presumably the Japanese original, be considered the default for this digital media release, with the English names added as aliases – and a pseudo-release added for Setlist.fm to import? Or something else entirely?
So far I’ve been working on the latter assumption but I wanted to check this before I go any further, to prevent mistakes.
I thought that it wasn’t a pseudo-release if it was on an official site. Pseudo-releases were for when there wasn’t an official transliterated release. In edits in the past it was told to me, to have both as official releases and add “official transliteration” to the one that wasn’t in the native language.
Well, that seems wrong. If pseudo-releases are only for unauthorized translations, then MBS-2544 (“unifying” pseudo-releases with official releases) is invalid to begin with.
If that’s really what we’re supposed to be doing, then,
The number of official releases that exist in MusicBrainz would be multiples larger than reality, with no way to know that most entries are just transl(iter)ated tracklists. Each translation would duplicate (incorrect values for!) release date, release label, and the like.
Release - MusicBrainz needs to say something far more extreme than “An alternate version of a release where the titles have been changed”
They are not only for unauthorized translations. They are also for all sorts of other translations, such as “The artist put the translations on their website” or even “The tracklist has original + translation”. The point is that if a release is out as a translated tracklist only, then yes, that’s a separate, valid release - although we might want to reconsider what we count as separate once we have alternative tracklists, since it would potentially make sense to merge releases which are officially the same but with alternating tracklists (same barcode, etc).
How does this transfer to the example in the OP, where an album has different (Japanese/English) titles between different language versions of the same streaming service, but all other information and the recordings themselves are identical?
That’s the kind of thing I was thinking of - personally I’d probably add it as official now, but still link it as a translation. And if it works like that, it does seem like we should indeed consider putting them together as one release once we have alternative tracklists.