Proper Rate Your Music linking

MusicBrainz
,
1

Hello hello! I’ve been casually adding Rate Your Music links to artists and release as I browse and do other edits. But now that I think about it there’s a couple things I’m not entirely certain on and wanted to ask about.

Do RYM links go at the release or release level group? Both?

I’ve been adding the links at the release level but I’m not sure if that’s correct because I don’t know if it’s possible that RYM changes the order of releases listed on an album page or if that might affect what the URLs point to.

For example:
This release group Succumb - Succumb currently has a CD release where I put this RYM link that points to the CD release there https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/succumb/succumb/. On the digital release I put this RYM that points to the digital release there https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/succumb/succumb-3/. But that first CD release link is also just the link for the album as a whole on RYM which to me feels like it would make sense to be linked at the release group level. And as I mentioned I don’t know if the primary release can change, making a release level relationship invalid.

Another thing I noticed is a lot of existing RYM URLs that use underscores for spaces, but currently I see hyphens being used instead. For example: https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/dolly-parton vs https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/dolly_parton. Should I change these if I see them? They both work the same but I don’t know if there’s value in a more recent version of the link.

2 Likes
Abbreviations in community posts
2

I’d say that’s a release group link with the release link for the “main” release being https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/succumb/succumb.p/

4 Likes
4

Yay, more links!

  1. As reo pointed out, the RYM release-level link is appended by a “.p” and then “-123” for any more releases in the group on RYM.
  2. So you can add https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/succumb/succumb/ to the MB release group and https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/succumb/succumb-1/ to the MB specific release (assuming that specific release is in MB)

imo it is important to get this distinction right (related ticket and discussion as to why this can’t be enforced programatically).

I think you can update the underscore links to the dashed version, if you can be bothered. Currently someone can add the dash version alongside the underscore version, and then we have duplicate links. Not sure if this can be programatically fixed/blocked either… some albums/artist will have an actual underscore in their name so we can’t just replace all underscores with dashes.

imo compulsory userscripts for adding RYM links:

  • Display shortcut for relationships on MusicBrainz
  • MusicBrainz Release Group Linker

Secondary, but also helpful: MusicBrainz RYM Link Checker (can’t remember how well this one works/don’t currently have it installed)

(find the userscripts here)

2 Likes
5

Is there a (hidden?) numbered -123 suffix, for their first edition?
With only that .p suffix, I feel we cannot link the first edition to its MB release…

6

I’m not sure I understand? The second release in the group gets appended with -1, but the first one remains .p (it’s a permanent link to that release) so it should be linkable.

7

I was afraid the -p would be dynamic/variable with time, like our release group front covers.

1 Like
8

Yeah that’s one of things I mentioned, can the -p link change? The other, number, suffixes don’t seem to change based on any reordering but -p could have a different behaviour. Maybe some experienced RYM editors or mods could confirm.

2 Likes
9

not too experienced with how this works, but I seem to remember it’s difficult for regular users to change the primary issue (the .p issue) of a RYM “release group”. I don’t know if it’s possible for the power editors to do this either (I forget what they call them), but the .p issue should be a pretty stable URL in my limited experience

1 Like
10

Like I said, I believe it’s a permanent link to that issue.

1 Like
11

As opposed to if it changed, in which case it would be a permanent issue, that link!

2 Likes
12

issue = problem or issue = release ?

13

Yes, exactly.

That is my experience.

1 Like
14

Sorry, issue = release

“Like I said, I believe it’s a permanent link to that release.”

1 Like
15

I think I might have found a counter example.

The suffix-less link is for the digital release at the bottom of the list https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/atomic-aggressor/sights-of-suffering/

Here the release group equivalent has a -1 suffix https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/atomic-aggressor/sights-of-suffering-1/

And so the “primary” release has a -1.p suffix https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/atomic-aggressor/sights-of-suffering-1.p/

So I think what happened is the digital release got added first to RYM but that album was actually released on bandcamp months after the physical releases, so eventually they changed the order and the old primary .p did change.

3 Likes
16

I feel like long-term, we should prolly just add RYM shortcuts (basically equivalent to MBIDs) instead of URLs, but I don’t know how possible it is to convert those into links

granted, that’s prolly another feature idea that’ll have to wait on release and release group attributes, lol

1 Like
17

Maybe I’m missing something, but I couldn’t quite figure out how you concluded that the link changed to point to a different version? I couldn’t find it in the wayback machine.

18

I thought that might be what happened based on the assumption that they would not add a URL with a suffix before needing to, but really there doesn’t need any rhyme or reason to it.

Now, I finally did go and look into it.

https://rateyourmusic.com/wiki/Music:Primary+issue

Primary issues are supposed to be able to be changed, because the primary issue is supposed to be the earliest release, but they could be added out of order messing that up.

They’re supposed to be transferable but it’s apparently not currently possible to do it. There is apparently a fix coming with Sonemic but who knows when that will ever go live. When it does at least all the releases listed in this thread will change, and that’s probably not exhaustive.

So then would it be best to continue linking them assuming most probably won’t change, but knowing that it technically could happen? (in the future, maybe)

3 Likes
19

Thanks for the in-depth research! I will keep adding RYM links, but with caution.

I didn’t realise the .p was for “primary”, but it makes sense. It sounds like .p gets appended, but maybe the rest of the URL stays the same? I guess the future change may affect URLs in a bigger way than just the suffix, as well.

P.S. nice to see that RYM can also take 5+ years to get things done :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes