Pseudo-releases confuse me, but after reading up on them it seemed like they might solve an issue for me although I wasn’t sure if it’s an appropriate use.
I’d like to add entries for the individual releases inside certain compilations of albums. For example Led Zeppelin - The Complete Studio Recordings or Robyn Hitchcock - I Wanna Go Backwards. These compilations contain complete versions of albums that do not have proper individual releases. I’ve done some annoying Picard scripting to get them to appear as their own releases, but it’s not perfect because I can’t easily associate them with the original release. So I’m trying to solve the following:
If I just use an existing release for the album, the artwork may differ from the compilation version (see Zeppelin Complete box set)
Release date info is based only on the compilation - can’t easily grab the original
Logic for splitting up the discs in the compilation gets difficult with multi-disc albums (Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti) - this also makes the disc number confusing
Sometimes they include bonus albums of additional material not released previously (see Robyn Hitchcock - While Thatcher Mauled Britain: Demos '81-'90)
You’re not supposed to add images to pseudo-releases, so I can’t see how it would help with this case.
In general, I’m not much of a fan - if those are not really separate releases, I don’t think we should have separate entries just to make it easier to tag them as if they were. It just doesn’t seem like MB is the right tool for that job and they should probably be tagged with a local tagging tool?
A media centre like KODI handles this by letting you manually assign separate artwork for the separate disks in the boxset. It spots the disk subtitles, whilst still keeping the box as a boxset.
In my own collection I have taken some boxsets and manually split them out as separate discs and used Picard to re-label them as the “originals”. Especially when I want a specific album on my phone.
Ahh, didn’t realize that. Definitely kills at least one possible advantage.
Generally I’m not either. Just started thinking about it because I was annoyed with a couple sets that were just 2 CDs together. But handling some of it manually is probably the way to go.
I think that’s the solution. I probably just need to be more generous with how I apply manual edits - or find a way to script so that they don’t get overwritten.
Add your own notes to the COMMENTS field. Stick something in there to make it clear it is a Made Up Release. Then your script could spot this phrase and know to keep it faked.
When I do this I keep the boxset as original, and make duplicates for the faked releases. Manually select the artwork I need.
I don’t have that many box sets so it is not hard to do something different for them and keep track of them.
I don’t do full automation scripts as I have too many variations in my library.
COMMENT already holds some info for me (purchase location and date), but I might make up a new tag just for this purpose. That should work. Thankfully there aren’t too many boxsets, it’s just starting to annoy me more when I want to play the original album and not an entire discography.
I still dream of having one ultimate script that covers every possible scenario in my collection…