Regarding album titles

MusicBrainz Style
1

I often see album titles that are not the same as on the album artwork. Theyre either completely wrong, missarranged or theyre missing symbols (- = + / ect), particles (the, an a) or whole words even. this is usually on online stores. my question is: should i follow the album cover or use the title as the store specifies? I couldn’t find anything in the guideline regarding this issue

also regarding capitalisation. if a webstore has the title in all caps but the album cover doesnt. which do i use?
example: http://www.melon.com/album/detail.htm?albumId=2173386

some examples

https://www.beatport.com/release/bounce-wid-it-mind-frame/1834541 missing one /

http://www.melon.com/album/detail.htm?albumId=2313106 album title is in korean, not in english as it is on the album cover

http://www.melon.com/album/detail.htm?albumId=2698242
album cover:HELLOVENUS X Devine Channel : Part2, Paradise
webstore: HELLOVENUS X DEVINE CHANNEL Part.2 : Paradise

2

Neither of them, use MusicBrainz’ titles capitalization standards, except if it is artist’s intent.

3

If you are editing a physical release, you should follow the physical release artwork, most often you will reproduce what the main spine text shows.

4

Online stores often have the worst titles, clearly entered by some minimum wage employee whose job it is to put 20,000 releases on the database before lunchtime.

So I often change online sources to something useful/useable/consistent. Not every time, but often.
I do feel bad about it when I do it though.

I’m not sure if we have a guideline applicable to this though. More of an unwritten guideline of “online storefronts have shit data”. I think a rule like “always match cover art” would probably become problematic in some cases.

4 Likes
5

:joy: Wah ha ha ha ha (20 characters) ha ha ha :laughing:

6

The cover art may also be part of the sh*t data, so I wouldn’t completely trust that either, at least not from Amazon, etc.

3 Likes