Need help with a really obscure album (sample)

Hi, everyone! I haven’t got the faintest idea on how to classify this album (assuming it’s eligible). It’s been in my possession for about 25 years, and it might just be the only copy in existence. I can’t find absolutely anything about it on the internet (and believe me, I’ve been searching for years). Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:

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Hi @rsalvaterra, yes, even obscure albums are eligible for addition to the MusicBrainz Database, and this CD release doesn’t match any of the 6-tracks “Driver” media currently in the MB DB.

Here is a tutorial: How to Add a Release

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There’s a freedb entry for it (search for discid 3d065406) but no more information than you have here.

I would guess you should probably create a new artist (unless you’re sure it’s the same as one of the other Drivers already listed) and a new label for “Recordscope” (it’s not entirely clear that’s an actual label, but as one of very few pieces of information available, it seems worth recording).

Release status should be “Promotion” based on the “Sample not for resale” marking.

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Yes indeed, @highstrung!
It’s http://www.freedb.org/freedb_discid_check.php?discid=3d065406 → Driver / Driver (but I doubt it’s a valid artist, should be [Various Artists], maybe?) → misc/3d065406:

Track Title Length (rounded to nearest second)
1. Heart To Heart 4:06
2. The Driver 4:16
3. Gotta Be A Good Thing 4:41
4. Man’s World 5:39
5. Life After Love 4:51
6. Tears Of The World 3:27

The picture above does not indicate a various artists release. I would actually add a separate Driver artist, as this is what is credited on the release. Without further details we can’t tell whether it is one of the existing bands called “Driver”, but the existing ones all don’t have recordings with names that are also on this CD.

What kind of music is it?

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Thanks for the help, guys! Yeah, now I remember the FreeDB entry because, well… I added it. :sweat_smile:
This is a pop kind of thing, the songs are rather generic, with a couple of exceptions. I think all the voices are sung by one (two, at most) persons and layered together (Queen-style), the effect is quite nice. The instrumental part is basically done with a Roland Sound Canvas (I recognize the sound) sound module and a lead (and possibly a bass too) guitar.
In any case, I have absolutely no idea who the artist(s) is(are), but I’m positive this release doesn’t belong to any of the exisiting “Driver” artists.

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Oh, I’m also on the process of making a backup of this album. Yesterday I tried to dump the tracks to WAV files on two different machines (with cdparanoia), but I got different SHA256 sums, yikes! I don’t know if it’s a WAV header problem, but I’ll try to dump them raw later this evening.

Could be one of those releases with covers done with anonymous studio musicians.
Have you tried fingerprinting it?

I don’t think so, they do seem to be originals. Sure enough, there are songs with the same names, but I hadn’t heard them before.
EDIT: Fingerprinting is useless, they aren’t recognised (with AcoustID, at least, I haven’t tried any commercial software).

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Different drives may have different offsets or something like that, that would make comparing impossible without compensate.
So I presume.
Check out Accuraterip (included in Exact Audio Copy, at least) table of CD drive offsets.

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Some CD rippers like whipper have the ability to figure out your drive’s offset (or give a pretty accurate estimate) as well. (You will need to use a reasonable known CD to have it calculate this though, so the Driver one probably won’t do. :slight_smile:)

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And here it is, finally. Let me know if I should change anything. :wink:

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Since you have the disc itself, it’s better to submit the disc ID through Picard instead of manually setting it as the track time will be much more accurate. Once you’ve ripped the audio file, you can also tag them on Picard and possibly submit the files’ AcoustID and also for AcousticBrainz but these are optional. If you’d like to put in the extra effort, you could also add some AR if the information is available on the packaging.

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I need to install Picard on a machine with an optical unit (or share it as a network block device), but yeah, I can do that, for sure. I just copied the times from the FreeDB entry.
And yes, I scanned the tracks and submitted the AcoustIDs. :wink:

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I have a cheap USB DVD drive I use for this, that’s another option.

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