Release_group with no releases

MusicBrainz Development
1

What’s the significance of a release_group that has no releases? I see over 1800 of them in the db.

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2

Which one for example?

There could be multiple reasons for a release group without releases. Generally empty release groups (RG) can exist for a while if they are newly created and no release yet added, or if all the releases for them have been moved or removed. Maybe the RG is being merged. Empty RGs without any relationships will automatically be removed, like other empty entities as well.

Theoretically there could also be RGs without any releases on purpose, if e.g. it is known a certain album of a band / artist exists, but there is not enough information to actually add one of the releases. Then the RG could still be useful to hold e.g. links to external sites or relationships.

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4

I expect “Something” is linked.

A common one is where a Release is in lone Release Group. It is then merged into a Release in another Release Group. Editor doing the merging assumes the “empty” Release Group will automatically disappear. But if there is any kind of data link, URLs, series, etc then that empty group will not be auto-cleared up.

5

There are 1859 of them currently. Here are the ids of the first 20:

85239
1811416
92361
1220037
1478362
1582705
1582706
573939
2444856
1823381
1768388
1823383
1401104
1763442
1887894
1914929
1871069
2033774
2296944
2296948

6

Those are internal database IDs. As I (and I guess most users here) don’t have the database running locally currently they are of little use to check anything. Could you share the MBIDs?

1 Like
7

Some of them have last_updated values going back to 2009. But there are a bunch as late as this year, too. Eight of them last updated on November 12, 2024.

8

You can also use database IDs on the website, just append them to https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/ and they will redirect.

4 Likes
9

Are those the GIDs? These are the 20 most recently updated ones:

846AD24D-1F25-4EB1-B2F1-D92F0A714CA0
576748B7-5D06-465C-9667-6CC1541E10CB
6CBE66EE-5579-468A-9D9D-F9589C97FFA2
749EA0FB-4336-47E1-8FEC-C670CCFC79F7
B813A9F7-A98F-4B5A-B1BE-C64E7B5A0727
67EED961-170C-4FD0-8A3B-B89DD07B32C6
2237CD7A-BD45-40CC-BCC0-C96521ACF7AD
C4C91FA0-B744-46D1-BB04-687840B9F6A7
1B4F5E9D-D40B-40E7-AD6D-3CE174C3223D
B98178A1-9EEB-42AF-AD2B-A0FB3574E938
C122072E-8D0F-4ADA-893C-D5E7F9CF7F2E
4A1613D8-C473-4239-89AF-B66F2BBE4270
5950612D-DC92-42A1-B019-E9CC2F6424E9
8EF3F19A-4119-460E-9547-9EE22CA1EE44
A3329F72-3F24-4824-A752-2584314C97F8
D205AC73-5D77-4B9D-A1E4-14A41F1316D5
CCD27A98-17F2-4EEE-935E-224FC30CA8A3
2EC2F036-2199-410A-946F-48D80B9D91E1
FFE4F688-1B14-42A6-B70C-383ABF262B81
3CAE27CD-7573-4BE0-9840-4AA404B41CD4

10

The first 3 here have series relationships that are keeping them around, the 4th has some external links. I imagine the rest would be similar.

2 Likes
11

Looking at those is quite interesting. I think there are a couple of different cases:

Orphaned release group left over after releases got merged
This seems to be quite common: Release inside a RG get merged, but the RG itself is left alone. But because it has some other relationships it stays. Some examples:

RG is part of a series:

RG has external links:

There is a good chance that most of these could be merged into another RG which actually holds the releases.

Orphaned RG after release got moved to another RG
Very similar to the above, just without the merge. Instead the release just got the RG changed.

There is a good chance that most of these could be merged into another RG which actually holds the releases.

RG got added to hold info about an album
RG just go added to hold info for an album, with external links (e.g. reviews). But noone added an actual release. So these RGs just stand for the album as a concept, but a release could be added:

Some just get used as a cheap way to link to an actual online release
Here is one with a link to Youtube and one which links to Spotify:

Ideally those get filled with releases. Or maybe there is a duplicate RG and they also can be merged. For some of those cases there might just be no info available for an actual release unless someone comes around with access to the physical release or some other source. But there is also the option to add releases with empty track list if that part is unknown. If the general info about the album is still useful and contains valuable relationships / links then that’s ok also.

RGs that are being merged
As expected the newer ones contain those that are in the process of merging. It is easy to accidentally create a duplicate when entering a new release without realizing there is already a RG for it. Or actually merging after the releases have been merged.

Or the RG had just been created when you checked the database, but in the meantime releases got added:

Many of the new ones you found no longer exist. This indicates they got created empty and got cleaned up automatically (or got removed by an edit):

10 Likes
12

Could be useful to have a report of those empty RGs. I would expect that most could be acted upon

13

Is there somewhere I could upload a report?

14

I clicked on the 8th one and it has a Release in it. Not empty.

15

Reports are something we write ourselves and which are kept updated automatically :slight_smile: A ticket for one for empty RGs might make sense.

16

Yes, this is one of the examples for recently added release groups. When adding a release group it is of course empty. So when looking at the database at a specific time you’ll very likely will find release groups that have been added without releases yetA later database dump will then show releases added.

So in the state of starlisa’s database this RG is empty, in current production a release has been added (or in that specific case moved over from another RG)

1 Like
17

Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have given you the 20 most recent ones. Maybe I should have given you ones that were last updated in 2009. I suspect those aren’t just waiting for releases to be added to them. I could be wrong, of course.

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18

Here’s an example of one I just added because a release in another Release Group needs its own. It’ll be empty until the edit to change RGs passes. (Ha, left the link off. I’m tired today.)

19

Please see my very detailed answer above. The two cases seem to be orphaned RGs after releases have been moved / merged or RGs that have been added to hold information about an album without release info being available or as a variation being created instead of a proper release.

4 Likes
20

I put together code for a report so we should get a report for empty release groups in the relatively close future :slight_smile:

5 Likes
21

I think it would be great to list only the release groups that are empty since longer than the auto-remove delay*.

This way we would not lose time checking things that are about to disappear (pending removal), anyway.

* I don’t remember its duration, when it says “this entity will be removed as it has no pending edits, no relationships, etc.”

2 Likes