I’ve been wondering, and have been unsure / unable to clarify this question through searches. How should one go about adding live performances? For instance, Glastonbury just happened. Should these recordings, available on YouTube, be added to MusicBrainz? How does one go about doing so?
This also kinda goes into ListenBrainz territory, if needed be I can move this onto a separate post under ListenBrainz. If I were tracking YouTube “listens” (watches?), would those just link to the original? Or should they link as a separate, live version specific to said event? I mean, the song is the same. Not sure if a distinction should be made? On a similar vein, what about music / lyric videos? I guess those would go with the original recording, no?
Yes, indeed. At least in the example of Glastonbury, certain performances of specific songs have been uploaded on their own to BBC Music’s YouTube channel. Not on the artist’s channel, though. I imagine that oughtn’t influence things, right?
I’m not sure how to add those, however. Perhaps because I am rather new to MusicBrainz. I’ve added one, for example. JADE’s Angel of My Dreams, as a recording (link below). Then, I’ve linked it as a live recording of the work. Is that correct? Is the live version a separate entity from the “original song”, or just a different version?
If I later wanted to link a listen of the Glastonbury video recording on ListenBrainz, do I link it to the original song? Or would there be a separate, live version to link to? I mean, deep down it’s the same song. But a slightly different version, in that it’s interpreted live.
I don’t usually track YouTube listens, given my current method can cause regular videos to be linked to tracks whose title or artist name match at least one word to the YouTube title or channel name. But I am fond of the idea of doing so, because I do sometimes watch or listen to music stuff on YouTube. Typically, either to watch the music video or a live recording, or because I follow an artist and they dropped a new song or version. Either way, those end up not counting as a listen anywhere, because they are not kept track of.
Sorry if I haven’t understood the question: You have now added the “live video” recording, which you can link the LB listen to. Personally I would not link it to a non-live recording (though I guess there’s no law against doing that :D)
If you watch a video of a different recording (e.g. a different microphone picking up the audio), or a different live performance, you would add another live recording, and link that.
I’ve added a recording. It doesn’t yet show up on ListenBrainz, though. Maybe too recent? Or do I need to add a different thing, like a release?
I also wonder on music videos and stuff. Should those be a different release or something? They’re the same song, usually (though sometimes I’ve seen some songs differ slightly). So I presume I just link the music video on the original release, right? And then just link any listens to that.
Which now leads me to wonder… what exactly defines a release? The same song on different music streaming platforms is one release. The music video… also the same release? A live version… different? If it’s essentially the same song / work, when exactly does it become a different release?
I know ListenBrainz tries to “canonicalize” your song so that it doesn’t matter whether you listen from an album or a single or whatever you still get the same song. I think that also involves counting live songs as the same as the studio version, but I’m not 100% sure.
You should be able to paste the recording URL into the ListenBrainz matcher search box immediately, it will take a little while to appear in the regular search.
The doc that reo linked is the full explanation. But generally speaking, no, you would not link a live version or a music video to a release unless it was actually part of that release. e.g. if the live version was not on a CD, you would not add the live version to that CD release.
In short: By linking them together via the work you have already ‘linked’ the versions together (album version, live, music video, etc) as much as you need to!
If you want to add releases for music videos etc there are a number of forum topics that you can search for, but it’s not required to link the recording to a LB listen (you just need the recording URL).
The structure of release > tracklist > recording > work can be a bit confusing, make sure you’re not mixing up any of that terminology. Once you understand that structure it all becomes pretty straightforward!
Indeed. I often have to try to remember Release vs. Recording
So in conclusion, I need not link a recording to a release. If needed be, I can just use the URL.
If I link to the live version, though, that’ll count, Stats-wise, towards the live version, innit? I find that a tad confusing, too. I mean, I heard essentially the same song, though interpreted live. Yet that’ll count as a different version. Would Stats account for it being the same song? Would it even make sense to count it as the same song? Dunno if what I’m saying makes any sense.
How would that work for stuff like Music Video or Lyric Video, or a Visualiser? Would those be separate from the actual song? Or linked as a video to the song? I mean, I guess the recording is the same, in theory (though it might differ at times). So I guess it goes as a music video to the recording, innit? Does it get a different Release? Or does one link to the Digital Media Release? What if the version differs slightly for the Music Video?
In general it seems like you are overthinking it, but it doesn’t hurt to be thorough, if this interests you
As far as I know, yes. If I remember correctly, the only place that LB currently does guesswork is picking albums, because the same recording can be on multiple albums. For instance, the same studio recording of a Beatles song could be on a few singles, albums, and hundreds of compilations. Some ListenBrainz submitters/players submit specific album data/MBID’s, not just artist and song names, but ListenBrainz does not yet use these to pick albums (it will in future, and then album charts should get more accurate).
Your only ‘job’ is to make sure you have linked the correct recording. How LB pages display things is just the front end, and can change over time.
It depends on your definition of the word “version”, here.
Different recordings of a work should be different “recordings”. But those recordings should all be linked to the same “work” - the work represents the song/composition.
Music videos get their own recordings, fan-made youtube lyrics videos/visualisers usually no. But that is a grey area: you can search the forums for discussion on what “counts” as a new recording.
And yes, the audio can be the same, but MusicBrainz stores other relationships too. A music video may have a different publisher, different (c), cover art, and director and actor relationships, etc, that don’t apply to the non-video version. So, we have to make a new recording to store the unique information.
