Live Recordings

MusicBrainz
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Hello, there.

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?

Thank you for your time!

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Were the recordings released in any forms?
If not, you can’t.

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Well…he said they were posted on Youtube–that counts as “released”, sorta, doesn’t it?

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Yes, could be.
I didn’t see the YouTube, short smartphone clips or full official concerts, etc.
It depends…

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If the full recording of a show (or a separate song) is officially on YouTube that 100% counts, and they can be added :slight_smile:

The shows themselves can also of course be added as events (and the recordings can be linked to the event too if added).

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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.

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Correct, excellent work!

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.

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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?

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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.

Have you seen the Release docs? :slight_smile:

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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! :smiley:

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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?

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In general it seems like you are overthinking it, but it doesn’t hurt to be thorough, if this interests you :slight_smile:

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.

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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.

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From the image above, it seems like we’re seeing from one artist’s view. Their live, studio, acoustic recordings. Are different covers by different artists linked to the same work? If Artist A covers Artist B’s song C, is the work the same for both versions?

Also, YouTube is kind of an interesting case. If a channel C uploads a cover an artist A did of a song S for their channel (think those Like A Version or BBC’s whatever it is they have like that one, innit?). Like, those end up on ListenBrainz as video_title by channel_name (at least with the way I end up tracking those, which isn’t ideal because it can’t quite distinguish between what’s music and what’s not). I imagine one should add those as “Song being covered”, by “Artist(s) covering it”, innit? Or should the channel name make any feature in there? I imagine there’s probably some field deeper within that one must fill this information on, probably.

Also, is there a line to be drawn between what is music, on YouTube, vs what’s not? I mean, at some point there must be a distinction where video being music, to not being music, innit? Music videos are music, right? And so are lyric videos, and visualisers. Do recordings of full live events count? If one gets a recording of a full live DJ set at an event, for instance? Or a Tiny Desk Concert, or an Elevator Music recording, or one of Global Sound Concerts. Does MusicBrainz track those? Should we add them? What about compilations? BoogieHead, for instance, with videos like “Most Reconiseable Songs of Each Year” or “legendary meme songs”. It’s music-adjacent, and features several tracks. Not really a mashup, or a DJ set, but similarly features many songs that don’t play in full like a playlist would

Maybe I am thinking a bit too from the technical side, though. I.e., if I were to determine, logically, whether a video counts as music vs not, seeing as YouTube goes beyond music. I guess if one were to build a tool for keeping track of YouTube listens, one could just check with YouTube Music. Not sure if YouTube Music is just for Music, or if it has other content

Yeah, I can do that, sometimes (can you tell?)

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No.

Yes!

Your post has a few too many questions in quick succession for me to answer properly, sorry, and some of those questions are interesting enough to already have their own dedicated discussion threads on these forums. But these seem important:

When we add releases/recordings, we strip stuff like channels/distributors from names, unless the artist intent is explicitly to have it in the release/song name. If the channel represents a music label, adding it into the ‘label’ field for a release would be appropriate. There is also a ‘distributed by’ relationships that could be appropriate.

The name should just be the name of the song, as it was released, and the artist should just be the covering artist. The way we identify a cover is by linking the recording to the original work, and checking the “cover” box (example here).

Yes, the content needs to be music-focussed. In my opinion stuff like live events, concerts, Tiny Desk, compilations, memes, etc, can be added. Whether they should be added comes down to if you think they are notable or useful enough to bother spending your time adding. I don’t add that stuff so I can’t offer any expert advice, I have my hands full with ‘regular’(ish) releases. But there’s a few existing threads that go in deep on adding YouTube videos, etc.

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Say, would this be the way to adding a live recorded cover that is only available on YouTube? It’s been added as a recording, no release.

There’s a link to the YouTube video on the page, and it’s this one: Se dice de mí – La Joaqui (con Mex Urtizberea) | Sesiones ¡FA!

The cover has been uploaded on its own, but is also part of La Juventud | ¡FA! #19 con Mex Urtizberea | Tiago PZK, La Joaqui, Zylberberg, Bilinkis y más…, which interweaves music and chatter. I wonder also how that one — the full thing — would be added, if added at all.

Should the cover be added as a release, or remain as a recording only? I’ve seen another lengthy thread on a similar topic of YouTube covers, but wasn’t yet sure.

The video also has plenty of credits for (I assume) everyone involved in the event (I think it’s specific to the specific recording of this cover, rather than the full thing. The full thing has its own list of credits). I’ve added the musicians, but not the rest (yet), along with adding the recording as a live cover of the work.

There are other, similar ones to be added, but I shall wait for confirmation that I’m indeed doing this correctly, lest I spam wrong entries

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The live YouTube cover recording that you added looks like am A+ addition to me :raising_hands: :raising_hands:

Maybe experienced YT-video-editor @UltimateRiff wants to take a look as well?

I’m not the right person to answer this but this thread looks like it should hopefully answer all of your questions, and cover other cases that you may want to add:

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I noticed you missed the Video checkbox on the YouTube link, but apart from that, looks like a pretty solid entry for a video as a recording. I probably would have added this as a release as well, but that’s complicated slightly because there isn’t yet guidelines on how video releases like this should be entered (specifically release groups)

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Thanks for the heads-up. I have indeed missed that. Now fixed.

I’m wondering, now… Is there a difference between a recording and a release, from a ListenBrainz perspective? If I link to a release vs. a recording, for instance. LB auto-links to releases, no? When listens come in from an app. Does it make any difference? If I were to link to a recording, and later add a release, for instance.

As for adding as a release, I might do that. Maybe. It’s interesting, cause I tend to think of an artist’s discography generally as the kind of stuff I see on Spotify. Songs they’ve recorded and released, usually original but sometimes covers. Singles or albums. But some have in fact recorded covers, live, and those have been made available through sources like Triple J, BBC Music, etc. And those aren’t any less valid, I suppose, as an “official” recording and release like you see on Spotify. Perhaps we’re conditioned to think of an artist based on what these platforms offer. Just because it doesn’t exist on a platform, doesn’t mean it isn’t a valid recording.

“Mashups on YouTube, video game soundtracks that don’t have a physical release. Livestreams where people play music. What about all of those? Recordings that don’t have an ‘official’ home”
Mic The Snare. (2024, March 8). I Quit Music Streaming For A Month [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved July 13, 2025, from https://youtu.be/T45zcgkgMzs
(quote timestamp: 12:01)

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indeed, I think the mode of release doesn’t make it any less “official”. you can have an official release on anything, whether a streaming service like Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, a MediaFire download link on social media, all could count as official releases for the artist’s discography

I’ll respond to your quote with another quote, this one from the about page

As an encyclopedia and as a community, MusicBrainz exists only to collect as much information about music as we can. We do not discriminate or prefer one “type” of music over another, and we try to collect information about as many different types of music as possible. Whether it is published or unpublished, popular or fringe, western or non-western, human or non-human — we want it all in MusicBrainz.

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You can also submit release MBID’s with a listen - it’s just that a lot of services (e.g. Spotify) don’t submit that data. For instance, my Foobar2000 plugin submits release MBID’s. Off the top of my head, if you use the ListenBrainz manual linker (settings > link listens) and link to a release, it should save the MBID for your selected album/version as well. You can check this by linking a listen and then clicking on the dropdown and then “inspect listen”, on your dashboard, after linking it.

LB isn’t always very good at using release data, because the early focus has been on using the “canonical release” auto-select/solving the issue of not having release ID’s.

However, if your listens have the most accurate data possible, then future LB updates will of course be able to make use of that data in terms of what it displays (stats, cover art, etc).