Since adopting MusicBrainz tags into my own library, I’ve gone with the “clean” approach to release titles. Typically I add nothing to a release title, unless I have more than one version of the same release. This is rare with albums, but happens quite a bit for me with singles.
Example: I have “Ch-Check It Out” by Beastie Boys as:
I assume there’s no “official” standard for this sort of thing since it’s not an issue for the MB database itself. But for local library tagging, what’s the conventional wisdom here?
I should add that the first two items in my example, I believe, were actually released in a “Part 1” & “Part 2” format, as is often the case with European singles. However I’ve applied that labeling convention to unrelated releases as well (e.g. a US promo and a German single) just to keep things consistent. I’ve also used “(single)” vs. “(maxi single)” here and there, but I’m not happy with how that looks.
In MusicBrainz you could use the comment field (disambiguation) to differentiate them. With some Picard scripting you can add the disambiguation to the release titles when tagging if you wish.
In my collection, when I have more than a couple of singles, I put these into a separate folder under the artist name.
When tagging with Picard I use a plugin - “Release Type”. This adds Single \ EP \ etc to the title.
And when you get an artist like The Chemical Brothers who may release a dozen different versions of the same single, then I make use of the Disambiguation Text. I use a version of a script to attach the disambiguation text to the Single title.
Or I just manually edit the title in Picard to something unique. I’ll often add my own extra release details this way.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I’ve been using the “release type” plugin, it’s great.
What’s the syntax for your disambiguation text? My thought is that it would go in parentheses, before the release type. So I’d end up with something like:
Body Movin’ (disambiguation) (single)
Two consecutive parenthetical notes can look a little clumsy, but I have a ton of individual songs tagged that way, so there’s plenty of precedent in my own library. Still clean and informative, and enough of an edge case that it’s not a big deal.
Then I guess it’s just up to me to describe how I standardize these labels. I figure I’ll at least stick to “Part #” for CDs that were explicitly marketed as such (something like the international “March of the Pigs” singles by Nine Inch Nails, which actually has a label reading “part of a 2-cd set”). Release country is an option as well. I don’t really like to use “promo” in my visible titles but I have a number of cases where that would apply. I may just fabricate my own “Part 1, Part 2” designations, haha.
Also want to make sure my “Part #” labels adhere to a sensible standard. Is there a preferred way in the MusicBrainz guidelines?
@Busta_Uppa I’m also still struggling with the scripts. That is actually a slightly cheated copy and paste there as that should work “in theory” but I am in the middle of something here so can’t really test it.
We used to have a prescribed normalisation of this, but this was revoked “recently” (like a year or two ago?), so now the “preferred way” is essentially “the way it is shown on the cover”. See Style / Titles - MusicBrainz for more details.
Since Picard assigns each release a unique identifier, there’s no problem of grouping them together if your media player lets you. You could easily do this in foobar2000 for example, though I haven’t actually bothered.
I mainly use iTunes, but now that you mention it - I think I could use the Album Sort field to keep two identically-titled releases separate. And as you mentioned, it wouldn’t be an issue for something like Kodi. I’ll have to try messing around with that!
See