I propose using the keyboard-accessible ASCII characters -, ', and " instead of typographic punctuation such as ‐, ', and " " in artist, release, and recording names.
This proposal concerns punctuation only. Non-ASCII letters (é, ö, ñ, 日本語, etc.) would remain unchanged.
Reasons:
Better compatibility with the rest of the music ecosystem (Spotify, Apple Music, Discogs, Bandcamp, Tidal, Qobuz, etc.).
Reduces duplicate entries such as Static-X and Static‐X, which many users cannot distinguish.
Reduces unnecessary edits in the MB
Works more reliably with older hardware, software, and media players.
Can be typed directly on virtually every keyboard without special input methods.
The visual difference is minimal, while the interoperability benefits are significant.
MusicBrainz is a metadata source used by many applications and devices. Using common ASCII punctuation would reduce friction while preserving support for all languages through Unicode letters where needed.
Just stick a plugin into Picard and swap them all out. Easy to do.
You ain’t going to win an argument over the pros and cons of them. So just fix them in your own tags like many of us do.
I don’t know if you had noticed, but this forum also swaps keyboard\ASCII to Unicode when you type. It is not just a MusicBrainz thing. It happens in every word processor too.
Then patch it in that software too. MusicBrainz is a database with a standard way of doing things. It is not here to please us taggers.
Personally it was the first thing I did was add a decent plugin to strip these out of my own tags. But I see why they are there. Try using a Word Processor, or even this forum. Unicode is a standard for a reason. You won’t get decades of standard turned over. Just the same as you can’t stop Discogs Stupidly Doing Everything In Capitals Even When It Don’t Make Sense.
Unicode is a standard in 2026, ASCII was invented a long time ago, and only support a small subset of characters used in the world (actually a very very small subset).
You can easily convert Unicode to any subset. And that’s why a database like MusicBrainz uses it, since any tool using the database can do proper conversions if that’s needed.
So, yes, fix all the software is the way to go (aka “not our problem”).
You may get some insights about all this from:
ASCII (the A means American), MusicBrainz is not English-centric and support any language or script.
About Unicode and why it was invented and adopted:
And for discussions about ASCII/Unicode/quotation marks/apostrophe:
Unicode is also less ambiguous in some cases. E.g., Some Title (“Favorite 7″” version) vs Some Title ("Favorite 7"" version). In the first it’s clear (hard to see maybe, but clear) that it’s a quote that contains 7 inches, in the second it just looks weird.
What? How do came to that conclusion? All listed above website (and much more) use unicode only for letters that is not present in ACSII - which is actual solution.
It looks cool, and true.
See your printed stuff around you.
Books and newspapers have been in place since way long before typewriters and then computer ASCII, and they have been using curly apostrophes and quotes and every other typographically correct letters like œ and everything.
For Deezer: No (I don’t know the others), I would say that it totally depends on artists and labels.
I have seen full typewriter releases and full nice releases.
And there are lots of mixed release, even French struggle because of their inherited limited keyboard (we have to use a word processor for correct characters).
For example within the same Clair Obscur 33 OST album, there is a mix of styles:
I hear your frustration with having to deal with a more complex data structure when it sounds like you would prefer a simpler one. Unfortunately, music metadata is complex.
However, I think your knowledge about how text is represented, and the role Unicode plays and ASCII used to play, is very incomplete.
Actually, no, Unicode is the universal standard for digital text, and ASCII is not. This very forum software uses Unicode for its digital text. It is thanks to Unicode than I can write the name Чайковский, or an emoji like .
ASCII lacks the ability to display Чайковский and , or even Strauß.
Also
It is feasible to convert nuanced to simple, but not the opposite. If symbols are stored as curly quotes, en dashes, and the like, it is possible for tagger software to map those symbols to simpler ones which are part of the ASCII subset. However, if symbols are stored as the simpler ones, it is not possible, in general, for tagger software to recreate the correct curly quotes, en dashes, and the like.
MusicBrainz aims to be “the ultimate source of music information”. That means it should aspire to store data correctly, and faithfully to capture the nuances of its structure — even if this means that tagger software needs to work harder to dumb down the nuances for particular uses.
It does have this option built-in, and it does work: Under Options > Metadata there is “Convert Unicode punctuation characters to ASCII”, and it does exactly what you need for your blink-182 case.
Isn’t it time MB automatically converted that apostrophe? I have thousands and thousands of edits changing that stupid thing to the correct one. If you want us to use an apothrofe that most of us don’t have on the keyboard maybe MB should automatically converted that thing. It’s such a waste of time, time which we could spend on other edits.
I have that lovely user script to do it for me, but if MB can’t do it automatically then there should be a button next to the Guess Case button. Not everyone uses this user script
To prevent wars: MB should make a choice and not leave it up to the editors. They have decided some things of which I think hmmm not my way of doing it but…If you leave it up to the editors you end up with the mess it is right now. If you leave it up to the editors there will only be a few who use the right thingie. Not to mentions al the newbies here that don’t know about this half-baked rule
.