ListenBrainz Wrong Release Group Auto-Mapping

Noticed an issue when submitting tracks: even if a track has the correct release_group_mbid and recording_mbid but lacks the track_mbid or release_mbid it is recognised as track from the wrong album.

Furthermore, when using Pano Scrobbler, even if tracks are tagged with all the correct MBIDs (including track_mbid and release_mbid) they are ignored and are not sent.

Why can’t track mapping simply be done using just the Artist, Track Title, and Album Title tags? While I understand that Artist and Track Title might be the minimum requirement, why not check for Album Title tag if it exists? (It is stored in listen json anyway)

Sometimes I only know the correct release group but not the specific release. Should I just randomly select a release within that group when tagging files (using MusicBrainz Picard for example) to satisfy the mapping system?

I just want simply to have my listens show the correct album and be accurately counted in my statistics. It’s frustrating to think about how many album stats across the platform might be incorrect due to these matching inconsistencies. And if it is me, the one who meticulously adds all needed tags, what about users who only have basic Artist, Track Title and Album Title tags on their files?

Can you please recommend me some way of dealing with this? (Except just manually linking listens with MusicBrainz every time this happens)

It seems that I’m not the only one facing this issue.

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Hi, I think the only way is to listen with something which submits the album details as well. On Android: Power Amp with the Listenbrainz plug in (disable Panoscrobbler for Power Amp or you will get duplicates), on Windows: Foobar or Musicbee with similar plug ins.

One good thing about this is it makes me stream less and listen more to the CDs I have ripped…

But unfortunately this will only make your listens page correct, the statistics page will still show random albums… apparently one of my top tracks is from an Italian bootleg CD…

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Thank you very much! I didn’t know about Power Amp LB plugin! Been using PA heavily for last year, best android player hands down.

Guess I’m stuck with adding fake release_mbid to all my albums.

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Yeah PA is great! Set up was a bit fiddly and you have to remember to keep the LB plug in app open otherwise it won’t record your listens. Look for this little icon at the top of your screen

Correct. The good news is that I have been writing a new MBID mapper (the tool that does the mapping of listens to MBIDs) and the new version should be much faster and much better, since it will actually be release aware (the current version is not).

Hopefully in a few weeks we can rolls this out.

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Is there somewhere I can read more?

There is a pile of in-progress code with very little documentation – its still in a throw-away repo on my personal account:

GitHub - mayhem/faster-fuzzy: A new version of the python based fast-fuzzy search

There is a lot of work to be done still.

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:heart: :heart: :heart: FANTASTIC NEWS! :heart: :heart: :heart:
Cannot wait to give it a try!

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If you have test cases in mind where the old mapper got things wrong, let me know. I’ve got a spreadsheet where I am collecting those to make automated tests…

Oh yes!
See my stats for 2nd most played track: ListenBrainz
“I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” by The Byrds. It always maps to this release (a bootleg from several years later)

The mapper isn’t responsible for the stats. It’s responsible to map a listen to a musicbrainz recording, and stats don’t care about the selected release

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True! But this track always maps to that bootleg version rather than the actual one.

So for a better example:

I just listened to it again (without linking it to the correct one)

{
“inserted_at”: 1745422290,
“listened_at”: 1745422214,
“recording_msid”: “ae721b95-e936-4f57-a61f-c81bf0604811”,
“track_metadata”: {
“additional_info”: {
“duration_ms”: 151000,
“recording_msid”: “ae721b95-e936-4f57-a61f-c81bf0604811”,
“submission_client”: “Pano Scrobbler”,
“submission_client_version”: “3.45 - 2025, Mar 16”
},
“artist_name”: “The Byrds”,
“mbid_mapping”: {
“artist_mbids”: [
“2819834e-4e08-47b0-a2c4-b7672318e8f0”
],
“artists”: [
{
“artist_credit_name”: “The Byrds”,
“artist_mbid”: “2819834e-4e08-47b0-a2c4-b7672318e8f0”,
“join_phrase”: “”
}
],
“recording_mbid”: “66ab11cc-cb0e-4aec-a2ba-56dcda37605a”,
“recording_name”: “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”,
“release_mbid”: “6ca0bd9f-0192-4343-87fb-3444d7914312”
},
“release_name”: “Mr. Tambourine Man”,
“track_name”: “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better”
},
“user_name”: “boysmithers”
}

Is it the same recording in MB?

Nope!
Real one
Dodgy bootleg one

There’s no ways other than relinking it.
It’s like that for a lot of artists. Most of carpenter brut’s listens went in the live versions…

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Yes! Some tracks are just cursed… I need to buy that Byrds album on CD…