Currently I am adding information to the release “Live in Manchester”, which is a recording of a live set played by the famous rave formation N-Joi.
The issue I am struggling with is that although the material was truly recorded at a live gig, with genuine crowd noise and artists yells, the music is basically a prerecorded mix of both released and unreleased tracks. So basically I have the option of setting the recordings as mixes of existing material (which would be somewhat unsatisfactory wrt the crowd noise and the unreleased tracks) or setting it as a medley, which is technically incorrect.
I’m a huge collector of these type of media and am using the podcast recorded in front of a live audience format until somebody can suggest something better, since as you know, some raves have multiple stages and tents with some artists playing more than one set on a given night so need a bit more than just 1993: Positivity: Warehouse, Plymouth, UK or whatever.
Pleased to meet a fellow raver on here finally.
Here’s my thread if you need it…
That is an interesting hack . I guess this could work as an acceptable alternative until MB finds a way to accomodate this type of live sets so thanks for that. Is there any way to make relationships to the works that went into the show, comparable to what one would do for medley’s, I wonder?
Sure thing, it feels lonely sometimes working through the early rave hits. Glad to see I am not alone
Somewhere between mix and medley. There are people with better experience that me who will give examples. I am more used to live musicians.
With something like this, I see a DJ who picks up a tape or record to play to a crowd is the Performer using an “Instrument” which just happens to be the pre-recorded track.
Follow some of @DerekFerric’s creations and hopefully you can help create a new standard. MB does add new types and roles as demand evolves.
So basically if all you have is a desk output recording and the flyer from the event, you might tag it something like…
in the ALBUM and TITLE sections: 1991-10-25: Perception, “Back Again By Public Demand”: The Speedway Stadium, KIng’s Lynn, UK
and in the ARTIST and ALBUM ARTIST sections: Richie N-Joi
Here is the album cover… If you want it not to be truncated in some media players, you would have to resize the image as a 1:1 aspect ratio which in some cases, like this one, the design might look a bit squashed so it’s totally up to you but Mixcloud do not give you this option and currently chop of the sides or the tops which makes their entire database feel messy to me.
after you’ve tagged and saved your own local files, you can load them up in Picard, cluster them and right click, add cluster as release and work from there.
The only reason I haven’t done this with my library yet is because MusicBrainz insist that we provide disambiguation information about every single name in the cluster. I simply do not know or have the time to investigate all that stuff because I frankly do not care.
I think stuff is only allowed to be entered into the MusicBrainz database after it has been uploaded to a place where it will forever be available so you might want to set up an account on archive.org if you’ve got rare sets and upload your masters.
A big thing I’ve noticed during my time here is that it’s all a reflection of Discogs releases, and for rave sets, they were never officially recorded so end up in the bootleg section… This presents a number of problems because often there were bootlegs of those bootlegs with entirely different details…
Only if it shares an existing name in the DB - otherwise you don’t have to add a disambiguation.
Which I think is fair enough, personally
If you care about not having your electronic artists mixed with random new rock artists (or whatever) of the same name, then I would add a quick disambig like ‘electronic’ anyway. But no pressure at all to do so.
You’re welcome to add stuff that isn’t available online at all, as long as it existed/was available to the public at some point. And sometimes that’s not even a requirement
The bootleg of the bootleg would share a Release Group if it was the same event. But it can sit there with its own details, title, name. This happens a lot with Pink Floyd gigs that were played on the radio. Dozens of variations then appear. Different Release Titles, different track lists, artwork. And this includes bootlegs of bootlegs of bootlegs.
If it all came from the same night it then it is gathered into the same Release Group. The RG then gets titled with the first or best known release.
In your examples, the RG title would be the official flyered versions you are uploading.
A variation can occur if those bootlegs then include two separate releases. They become compilations and new RGs of their own.
If what you have is all called track 01, track 02 then that is what it is and the release can be uploaded like that. You are documenting what you have. And as @aerozol says, you don’t have to put them on archive.org as long as you got it as a bootleg from somewhere then you are documenting something that existed. It just needs to have been available to the public some where, sometime.
A tape you made and copied to a couple of mates don’t count. A tape you picked up at a local car boot sale from that geezer flogging lots of tapes of gigs does count. Something you downloaded from a link on a forum that was hosted on megashare counts.
Even if all you upload is named track 01, track 02, etc it is then a framework for the next editor to come along and fill in the details. Especially if you did leave a copy on Archive.org.
Yeah, but currently I can’t get to that stage because the DJ is in the Artist field and it won’t let me past that stage until I clarify something like their nationality or speciality - for thousands of different people, manually, when by the time I’ve finished doing all that, there could be AI to take some of the stress out, seeing as it will be the 2030s by then.
I had a friend who was renaming all of his MP3s but not via the tags so as soon as he loaded all his MP3s into a library organiser it lost all his filenames and replaced them with whatever the default Title tag was… And I see it still happening now in the modern day with “Serato Recording 1” replacing all the date and stuff they renamed it as before publishing it online…
If the system could be more like Wikipedia (adding a notation to say citation needed or ‘disambiguation needed’, other editors or people representing those people might volunteer to add further details which have emerged since these old era shows even took place, like official websites and whatnot, or if people have changed their stagename, ie. Andy Weatherall to Andrew Weatherall and correct people’s libraries if they so wish.
My collection is now too vast to get to that stage as I’m more worried about making sure uncredited MCs are in my metadata as many a set has been improved (or ruined) by whoever was on the mic and it gives the listener more choice, plus future proofs this media so people don’t assume the pissed up bastard shouting is the DJ himself, which in turn creates another hurdle of breaking them up into secondary “featuring” fields… Aside from which, a lot of the files might have been ripped from cassettes which are yet to be listed on Discogs or were hosted on now defunct websites. I’m working on this now and can’t hang around on the off chance some even more vague but “official unofficial bootleg” shows up!
Don’t get me wrong, if I’ve got a trillion sets by Bad Company UK, I’m happy to disambiguate them from Bad Company, and do the same for any other folks - but it doesn’t seem possible to do the whole batch at once, not one at a time. Unless I’m missing a trick? Do you think there might be a workaround? I just want to know that I can get as much done of the most importance before I pop my clogs based on the trivia only the old heads will know.
When you enter a new artist for the first time, there unfortunately is maybe two,three clicks involved minimum, per artist. That’s unavoidable (e.g. new artist > submit).
If they already exist then you will also have to fill out the disambiguation field with something, again unavoidable sorry.
One step at a time haha! You don’t have to do the thousand at once
It seems like you really love your stuff, so I think you will start to enjoy it when you realise that you are making these DJ’s live forever, giving them a place in the database. Artists are such an important part of the puzzle!
Just do a release or two is my advice, see how it goes. If you hate it then potentially you’re just not into data entry
Yay, that is exactly what MB is! If you only enter the bare minimum for a new artist, artist name and maybe a disambiguation, you are leaving blanks for other people to fill out.
Whether someone else has your in-depth know-how in your niche area and the time to fill out everything is another story… but absolutely, you just enter what little you want, and see what the community does. And you can always come back and add more later, when you can be bothered.
. I guess this could work as an acceptable alternative until MB finds a way to accomodate this type of live sets so thanks for that. Is there any way to make relationships to the works that went into the show, comparable to what one would do for medley’s, I wonder?
