I have been perusing the MusicBrainz forums and I noted that some people have expressed frustrations over trying to identify the correct UPC to use with iTunes releases since iTunes makes it difficult to identify sometimes. I have run into this issue myself and I spent some time researching the underlying cause and I have identified a solution.
Using a binary reader, such as https://www.proxoft.com/BinaryViewer.aspx, a search using the iTunes album ID in the file will yield a match for the UPC used for the album release.
I have tested a few albums by taking the resulting UPC and using the iTunes Search API (example “https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?upc=720642462928”) and confirmed that it works for the small test sample. It needs further testing though to validate its use for all users. The problem is how to do this in a manner that doesn’t kill my bandwidth on distributing the file/information.
I want to provide the 115MB file to an MusicBrainz admin or someone who is willing to host it for others to use or can incorporate it into a web search tool. I reached out to marlonob to incorporate it it into his search tool at https://etc.marlonob.info/atisket, but I haven’t received a response from him yet. I really do not want to receive a million requests for the file itself.
I also can not guarantee that I will be able to acquire future updates of this file, but it should be of some use for existing releases.
Please let me know how to proceed with this file to best help benefit the MusicBrainz community.
I’d love a copy of this, but I have no way of hosting. I update iTunes releases daily and this would be of use when the barcodes can’t be found in either the .jpg filename or on ISRC.
This is fabulous. Thank you so much.
Would you know if such a database also exists for iTunes music videos? Or, more specifically, would you have access to such a file?
Thanks a lot!
I may have found the file you are looking for. It is listed as “video match XX-XX-XX” in the Google folder.
Please let me know if it is the file you are looking for.
I noted that the Apple Enterprise Partner Feed Support Personnel had not released an updated complete match database since July 2021. I submitted a support ticket inquiring as to the cause of this.
Per response to my support ticket inquiry dated 09/30/2021:
“The EPF feed is currently being updated to a new version (v5). The new feed will be live in the coming weeks and will include Apple Music data and updates to help efficiency.”
Hopefully, this will be updated by Q4 2021. I will check every so often for an update, but I can not commit that a complete update will be uploaded anytime soon.
In the meantime, I uploaded as many of the incremental files as I was able to locate and they are located in the “Q3 2021 Incremental” folder.
Apple appears to have completed their conversion to the new EPF v5 feed sometime in Nov 2021. They also pulled all database files off the EPF site dated prior to 11/25/2021.
Apple changed their folder hierarchy in v5, but I believe that I have correctly identified the correct full match files that I uploaded previously.
The new files are dated 2021-12-07 in the Google Folder folder.
I will need the community to test and confirm this assumption. Please let me know if you find something amiss.
Hi there! Is there any way you can tell me a little better how to get the UPC? I did everything I was told in your initial post, but I cant seem to get an actual UPC (that looks like one anyway).
or better yet, can you give me the UPC to this album?
I have nothing to do with this. However, the files that Daniel is posting is the entire Apple Music DB on the date that the file is named. They don’t change (because you download them locally to your hard drive), so it’s good to have for when releases are removed from Apple Music, you have a file that has the old IDs-barcodes match. There is no automatic way of adding all metadata to MB with these files. You have to just do it the traditional one release at a time way.
@DanielTB80 where did you have access to it ? If this is the whole UPC one, do you have same kind of table for ISRC? it will be really cool to map all track from Apple
I have previously posted the video_match database so it is already on the Google Drive. I just posted the song_match database, so see if that gives you what you need.