Merging Two Releases Where Format is Only Difference

Hello - I’m a recording artist who’s released an album, and I was attempting to create a Release Group for this album as follows:

  • One release for the CD in the database
  • One release for the digital media in the database
  • Both of the above together under the same Release Group

However, somehow when I was entering the Digital Media entry, the system created it as a separate release…

With the result that e / s \ c - MusicBrainz is showing two release groups for the same album.

Note: the only difference is that the format for one is “CD” and the other is “Digital Media”.

After some searching, the only thing I see that might fix this is: How to Merge Releases - MusicBrainz

However, I’m not 100% sure my scenario fits the intended purpose for this, so I wanted to double check before proceeding further.

Thanks for your help

2 Likes

What you should merge here are not the releases (the editions, the versions) but the release groups, as they represent an oops and should be only one release group containing all editions.

Go to your artist page.
Check both release group check boxes.
Press the Merge release groups.

8 Likes

Thanks for the the reply, @jesus2099, and also thanks for letting me know I had to select both releases on the artist page for merging …

When I did that, I was sent to an additional page where I needed to select which of the two releases to merge into. I wasn’t sure what to do there, but I’m guessing the first entry (which is for the CD release) is the best one to use. So I used that, and now it’s in peer review …

Hopefully once this is approved, everything will be corrected and I can move on knowing the database is correct!

2 Likes

Your edit looks fine to me!

2 Likes

Generally, it’s good practice to merge into the more correct entry, if there is one, and otherwise to merge into the older entity (whose MBID is more likely to be referenced in external systems). In this case the age difference between the two isn’t significant so the direction of the merge matters extremely little.

Accidentally creating a duplicate RG is very easy to do and I would guess most experienced editors have made that mistake at least once.

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Please vote / comment:

:wink:

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