Is it possible to delete this release?

Hello,

About three years ago this release was published on MusicBrainz, but it doesn’t actually exist. I am one of the artists on the “record” but it was only a SoundCloud playlist, and the user likely posted it in good faith. Is it possible for releases to be completely wiped from MusicBrainz?

Thanks in advance

Please see our Data Removal Policy. We do not remove content simply because an artist demands we do so.

Ninja’d by @HibiscusKazeneko, but this should still be helpful.

Because of how MusicBrainz handles recordings, most users (myself included) prefer finding something that can be roughly described as a release to sort otherwise-individual songs into. Soundcloud playlists (that do more than collect whatever the compiler found interesting) are one such good excuse. Looking at yours, it’s more than close enough to an album to count for the purposes of this site. And as for it not existing, sure it may not be possible to buy or download, but I can still hear it perfectly well when I click the play button :wink:.

In general, MusicBrainz strongly discourages deleting information. Merging with other instances, definitely, and if something is spam or a complete mistake then you can probably get the deletion passed, but there’s very little requirement for notability. To paraphrase the data removal policy page: the fact that someone else took the time to add the playlist means that its presence in the database (and its existence) has value.

To the website maintainers: I had to resort to searching the documentation to find that page. There’s a chance I missed something obvious, but that seems like something that should be easy to get to, not one that you need to already know exists before you go looking.

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It used to be easily accessible via a drop-down menu (“Contact Us,” I believe was its name), but that menu has since been removed.

Ah, thanks. Can’t fault the overall change, but that one page would probably still be helpful somewhere, eh? :slight_smile:

Definitely. Since its removal at least one other artist (not OP) has attempted to strong-arm us into removing data from our database. It would definitely help to keep the policy as visible/easily accessible as possible in order to make our position known.

And just to provide a quick summary of the mentality here; to me, it sounded more like @LiamBrigg was just thinking that our “releases” are supposed to be actual releases, and wanted to let us know that Images never got beyond Soundcloud-playlist status.

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What constitutes a “release” is extremely fluid, especially in this day and age where many artists are choosing to forego traditional release methods (i.e. physical or digital media available for purchase) and exclusively release their content on streaming platforms.

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Exactly. But anyone who’s less used to the internet or who comes to MB thinking “database of albums” or even “database of produced and distributed music” might read “release” as being more restrictive than it is, and wonder why we’re including (to name a community I’ll be focusing on) songs only given out through MediaFire links on the artists’ official YouTube videos. The “Three-Minute Introduction to MusicBrainz” (with a “read this before asking about deleting anything” notice) I’m imagining would definitely take more work than just re-linking the deletion policy page, but I can’t help but think it will be useful.

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But it does actually exist :slight_smile: What is the reason you don’t want it to exist?