Should audiobooks be in separate edition groups?

[jwillikers]

Should the audiobook editions of a book be in their own edition group separate from the ebook and print edition group? This question stems from adding meaningful series relationships for audiobook editions. In MusicBrainz, release group series are used to organize all audiobooks in a series. This works really well in situations where there are multiple variations of audiobooks based on the same underlying work, like abridged and unabridged books, and audiobooks where there are different releases by different narrators. It seems like mapping BB edition groups for audiobooks to MB release groups is the best way to have proper series for audiobooks. This came up in Distinguishing between digital editions, and I thought it deserved its own discussion.

[indy133]

We should first finally decide whether we even want audiobooks on bookbrainz.
Have you read this thread?

Does it make sense to create separate editions for audiobook CDs distributed with the printed book?

I have several printed books that come with a CD of someone reading the text and I was wondering if such CDs should be added to the database as a separate edition. I generally think they should, but given the fact these CDs weren’t sold separately, I don’t know if it’s correct to do that?

Yes, we have the format choice “audiobook”, (we have also the choice “library binding”, which is nonsense obviously - both are remnants of the earliest version of bookbrainz), but we don’t have a single option for sound related credits (reader, narrator, studios etc.).

So we should decide first. Do we want audiobooks in bookbrainz?

And if the decision is yes for the majority of users, the next question is: Why don’t we import all audiobooks from musicbrainz at once?

So we need a decislon…

[UltimateRiff]

I personally think it’d make sense to include audiobooks in BookBrainz, as they’re pretty much equivalent to a book, at least to a lot of people I know

that also brings up the question, where do we draw the line? audio dramas? podcasts? movies*? I would personally be fine with many of these (I’ve listened to several great fiction podcasts, like Welcome to Night Vale), but I can understand if others don’t feel the same way

*I seem to remember seeing Screenplay as a work option

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on the question at hand, if we do allow audiobooks, I would say a seperate edition group (probably along the same lines as MusicBrainz does it). I’ve already done it this way for the few audiobooks I’ve added

[aerozol]

If the duplicate data entered in to BB is minimal, then I would be fine with entering audiobooks.

If it is just a lot of re-work of what’s entered into MB for audiobooks, then I would prefer a way to link a MB release/release group, and display that info in BB instead (it wouldn’t have to look that different to a BB release page proper - probably exactly the same, just that the ‘edit’ button would send you to MB).

A bit of blue sky thinking of course, as it would involve dev work…

[jwillikers]

I think the most valueable thing would actually be the ability to link recordings to works in BookBrainz, since I end up duplicating a ton of works in both BB and MB. I prefer BB for literary works, as it tends provide richer information.

Having added a lot of audiobooks to both MB and BB, the edition and works are mostly just duplicated. The BB editions do always have a language (for the title) and sort name, which MB doesn’t. That’s about the only real difference I can think of. If I could somehow search by ISBN in BB, and still get a result for an audiobook only entered as a release in MB, I would be totally happy with that.