No offence, but we’d really appreciate it if you’d do it yourself. It’s not that hard: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Add_a_Release. There is also a script to automate part of the importing process: https://greasyfork.org/scripts/403056-musicbrainz-import-from-itunes
You can find more how-to’s here: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_To
If you have any specific questions, we’d love to help.
Better yet, there’s a tool that lets you import from multiple digital sources (iTunes, Spotify and Deezer) at the same time:
I understand now why they were asking for help…
Was bored, so I added 83 releases yesterday and another 58 today.
Looks like I’m halfway done.
Note that the entries might not be perfect as I rushed through it.
Error: Couldn't parse input string
Nah, seriously, these were added by hand. All you need is a tool to seed basic data, a bit of free time, and some userscrips and browser extensions here and there.
With the right workflow (plus a powerful enough machine, which I don’t have :D) and depending on the data you can add lots of releases rather quickly.
Let’s start with the data source:
iTunes
- I picked this one because compared to Spotify it seemed more complete for the artist in question.
- Spotify limits the amount of open tabs. (Fuck them)
- Spotify is weird when it comes to guest artists. Take this release for example
- Clearly has a featured artist even on the cover yet they demote them to track-level
- Deezer includes them with the
featured
role but a-tisket doesn’t pick it up - iTunes includes them in the title with the usual “feat.” formatting. (Neither the fork by atj nor the version by marlonob seem to fully remove feat. artists from titles. Oh well, just click “guess feat artist”)
Compared to Spotify, Deezer and iTunes have the caveat of lazily loading release lists -_-
Spotify seems to do this for images only
Userscripts
Installed almost all MB ones (but disabled those I rarely use) plus some general scripts
Browser extensions
- Notably uBlock Origin to get rid of ads, tracking scripts and other annoyances that degrade the browsing experience (also hide elements - like help texts - in the editing interface)
- Imagus: To easily grab images in high resolution. Just hover over the image, wait for the pop-up, then hit CTRL+S
Also, due to the way the Spotify ISRC submitter by tatsumo authenticates I changed browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground
to true
(Edit: Chromium users can achieve a similar behavior with an extension)
no more focus stealing background tab (❁´◡`❁)
Workflow
- Overcome lazy loading by constantly scrolling down and up until everything seems to have loaded
- Open a couple releases pages in new tabs
- Wait
- Use bookmarklet to open them all on a-tisket
- Prepare seeding
- Actually seed releases
- Prepare again
- Submit releases
- Proceed with cover art and ISRC submission (this part I didn’t do en masse but one by one)
Shameless plug: I have a personal readme where you can find mentioned tools
Also, due to the way the Spotify ISRC submitter by tatsumo authenticates I changed browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground to true
no more focus stealing background tab (❁´◡`❁)
Huge tip I hadn’t read before, appreciated!
- Overcome lazy
Damn, that’s going to be a challenge
This page is totally awesome!
There goes another 146 releases (minus the duplicate, make that two)
How much more there is? I have no idea. The oldest release I’ve seen is from 2013 and I’ve barely made it to 2018.
Or better yet, give Grant MacDonald a shot.
Full disclosure: I got sucked down this rabbit hole last year in the fury to import as many CD Baby releases from their store before it closed. After importing 300 releases out of an ungodly number (it was something like 800 at the time) and having to dodge many that looked like nothing more than gay porn DVDs, I decided to cut my losses and walk away.
This deserves to be a separate sticky post @chaban!. Thanks for the links to my a-tisket mirror and userscripts. Nice to know that people find them useful
Lol, I just found the equivalent Discogs thread from 2014(!) while I was looking for something entirely different:
https://www.discogs.com/forum/thread/400537
Seeing the responses over there, it’s obvious that our community’s responses are much friendlier and certainly more helpful…
Hah, thanks for that! Very amusing.
Before we pat ourselves on the back too much let’s remember that the distance of separation between MB and Discogs, in this case, is 1 unit of chaban
And perhaps all our lovely script writers… does Discogs let you seed releases in the same way?
If I’m not mistaken Discogs wants you to have the release in hand at all times when submitting. It’d be against their rules to e.g. take scans from the CAA and add it to a release there. So I guess if someone were to add them all over there, they’d have to buy hundreds of releases of a random artist.
Edit: To quote someone from that Discogs thread:
Having the release is a requirement for adding it. Since iTunes releases cannot be loaned, it means someone must first purchase them in order to submit them.
But Apple Music can be streamed, which is sort of like borrowing… C’mon Discogs editors, what are you waiting for?
Discogs actually bans streaming-only releases from being entered into their database.
I’m actually surprised they allow digital media releases to be entered at all, since they’re not allowed to be sold.
Discogs always struggled with digital media and there is still stuff like “Every format is an own submission” etc. Even for the same source. But the staff is too focused on the marketplace, so no one really cares about the db. And yes, you need to own a release to submit it. Streaming is not allowed. I always bought the releases on itunes before adding them.
Absolutely true that this community is more polite and helpful, this is also the reason I like to hang around here more.