Picard has an option to ignore silent tracks when determining whether a release is complete. But how does it know a track is silent? I’ve never seen an option on MusicBrainz to mark a track or recording as silent. Where can I find it?
It perhaps checks for the track title [silence]? That wouldn’t be foolproof, of course.
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That’s exactly what it does, it completely depends on the style guides being followed.
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Doesn’t using [silent], as the style guide says, mean that the release (album) will end up with the same recording many times? I had thought that a recording would be unique on a release.
I don’t think there is any rule against having the same recording on a release twice. It is very unlikely to occur, because even if the same work appears multiple times on the same release, they are usually different versions. I have never thought about using the same recording for all [silent] tracks on a release to be honest.
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That is how the [silent] tracks often seem to have been used - same recording many times. For example Release “The Rainbow Children” by Prince - MusicBrainz
It came as a big surprize, so made me question it. But as you say it is unusual for actual music where the same work repeated would usually be different recordings.
I have seen the same recording on different discs of a set, that was a surprize too. But as you say, no rules against it.
There’s also nothing that says all [silence] recordings must be the same - you can have plenty of recordings with the same name in one release 
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It is kind of odd though, or is it just me. 
Is there any rulle to say that a “recording” of the same length of silence is the same recording? And that different lengths of silence must be different recordings?
I am not worried about naming, just how the mbids are being allocated.
I think the idea is that all pure (digital) silence is basically equivalent, while recorded silence isn’t (since it includes ambient noises and whatnot)
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I’ve read this thread over a couple of times, and I still don’t get where you get this idea from… ? @chirlu notes that Picard checks the track title. Several tracks on a given release can have the same title, even if they’re not the same Recording, as @reosarevok also notes.
I was just expressing my surprize at finding releases with the same recording multiple times, and asking if this was correct.
I understood that a release could have manys tracks with the same name, and I am not saying that calling several tracks on a release [silence] means that they have to be the same recording. But in the examples I have seen of releases with multiple tracks called [silence], they often are entered as repeats of the same recording.
If it is by design that there is a many to many relationship between release and recording then that is fine, I was just checking.
It certainly is. It can even happen for non-“[silence]” recordings. E.g.,
https://musicbrainz.org/release/7ca7c6a0-5d15-47bc-8d20-f8938e2c5b98
Compare “Mellemspil” to “Mellemspil 2”. 
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I don’t see any reason why a recording should not appear on a release more than once. It is for sure uncommon, but definitely possible and very likely there are examples of this.
EDIT: I saw @freso’s post just after I wrote this, but he even has found an example
It’s an example I keep up my sleeve for occassions such as this. 
(Also, I was the one who “created” the example, so to speak: Edit #17735003 - MusicBrainz)
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