On the addition of pre-releases / upcoming releases

MusicBrainz
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Hello, there!

When it comes to pre-releases, a few questions I have.

Firstly, should those be added? I.e., is there any reason for one not to add an upcoming release?

Secondly, if the songs aren’t yet titled, it’s best to omit it altogether, no? Or should the placeholder title be added?

I’ve seen an instance of an album already added, but with no tracklist whatsoever, opting instead for crediting associated singles/EPs (see below). I have filled out the tracklist, but I do wonder if I should have (as in, were they doing it right, and I’m messing it up?).

I have added a few already, based on Spotify’s Upcoming Releases hub. But given I hadn’t yet done pre-releases, I just want to be sure, ahead of further spamming MusicBrainz. Given these aren’t yet releases, as they have yet to release, and not a lot of information is available (and, most importantly, Harmony can’t parse those, so I have to add information [semi-]manually [I did write some JS to scrape the tracklist in the parser format, so at least that comes easy])

Here be a few pre-releases I’ve added, for example:

First one I’ve added, last week (already shows on my fresh releases page):

I can also share the JS, if anyone’s interested. Or if anyone knows a better tool to scrape pre-releases… (Harmony 7x1s the Python script I initially created to spit out Spotify release data)

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Yes, pre-releases can be (and frequently are) added.

Personally, as someone who mostly adds digital media, I’d prefer that editors hold off on adding releases until the track order, titles, and durations are finalized. It’s usually more work to fix titles or add missing durations to an existing release than it is to import the complete release from scratch using a seeder or userscript.

(Tip for adding missing durations: Use a seeder or userscript to start adding the release, then open the tracklist parser with durations and copy and paste the tracklist into the parser in the existing release. This can blow away existing titles or artist credits if you aren’t careful, though, and I still usually find it slower than just importing the whole release from scratch.)

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yes, we welcome not-yet-released releases~ I pretty regularly add upcoming releases for a couple labels that take track submissions for albums as soon as I see submissions open, for example:

on albums with prerelease tracks, I don’t know if there’s any consensus on how to enter those, but I think it’s safe to just add [unknown] or [track 3] titles, if you know how many tracks there are but the titles haven’t been revealed yet

that said, your way is a viable option, just adding the known tracks. that said, I don’t know how that works with the tracklist parser and recordings tab…

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