Simplification of URL to www.HMV.co.jp

HMV.co.jp is often entered as the site for “purchased for mail-order” in Japanese releases. The raw URL of HMV used in this case is very complicated, so please introduce an input support function based on the following simplification rules and update the existing data?

https://www.hmv.co.jp/artist_Subway-Daydream_000000000862532/item_100_15652228

https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/15652228

Here are some other examples, these URLs are actually used in MB.

https://www.hmv.co.jp/en/artist_%E3%83%87%E3%82%B8%E3%82%BF%E3%83%AB%E3%83%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC_000000000817410/item_DIGIMON-HISTORY-2015-2023-All-The-Best_15631174

https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/15631174

https://www.hmv.co.jp/artist_%E4%B8%89%E6%B2%A2%E7%9C%9F%E5%B8%86-Cv-%E4%BA%95%E5%8F%A3%E8%A3%95%E9%A6%99_000000000459844/item_%E3%80%8C%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A6%E3%81%8D%E3%82%85%E3%83%BC%E3%81%B6%EF%BC%81%E3%80%8D%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A3%E3%83%A9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BCCD2-%E4%B8%89%E6%B2%A2%E7%9C%9F%E5%B8%86%EF%BC%88CV%E4%BA%95%E5%8F%A3%E8%A3%95%E9%A6%99%EF%BC%89_4126490

https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/4126490

https://www.hmv.co.jp/artist_%E3%82%82%E3%82%82%E3%81%84%E3%82%8D%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AD%E3%83%BC%E3%83%90%E3%83%BCZ_000000000456451/item_%E7%94%B0%E4%B8%AD%E5%B0%86%E5%A4%A7_11484396

https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/11484396

4 Likes

There are a lot of existing tickets like this in the ticket tracker, which means you can clone and adapt a similar ticket (like this one).

  • make an account on tickets.metabrainz.org
  • click on the [more v] dropdown in the top bar of the the similar ticket
  • select [clone]
  • edit the cloned ticket title and contents to describe what you want changed/cleaned up
1 Like

@reosarevok should correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that canonical URLs usually shouldn’t redirect somewhere else.

For the first example, both URLs redirect me (from a U.S. IP address, with a browser that doesn’t say I understand Japanese) to https://www.hmv.co.jp/en/artist_Subway-Daydream_000000000862532/item_100_15652228.

In general, it looks like the HMV web server considers something like this to be the canonical path:

/[country_code]/artist_[artist_name]_[artist_id]/item_[album_name]_[album_id]

They annoyingly only appear to use the album ID that appears at the end – you can change the rest of the path to be completely bogus, like /en/artist_bogus_123/item_bogus_11484396, and still get the same album page without any redirection to the canonical path.

1 Like

Some canonical URL we have been frequently using are already redirecting:

https://www.discogs.com/master/1929 redirects to “human readable” https://www.discogs.com/master/1929-David-Bowie-The-Man-Who-Sold-The-World.

It’s like HMV, even in Japan, the short URL will redirect to the big URL. 3rd example:

https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/4126490 redirects to full:

https://www.hmv.co.jp/artist_%E4%B8%89%E6%B2%A2%E7%9C%9F%E5%B8%86-Cv-%E4%BA%95%E5%8F%A3%E8%A3%95%E9%A6%99_000000000459844/item_%E3%80%8C%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A6%E3%81%8D%E3%82%85%E3%83%BC%E3%81%B6%EF%BC%81%E3%80%8D%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A3%E3%83%A9%E3%82%AF%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BCCD2-%E4%B8%89%E6%B2%A2%E7%9C%9F%E5%B8%86%EF%BC%88CV%E4%BA%95%E5%8F%A3%E8%A3%95%E9%A6%99%EF%BC%89_4126490

That is “human readable” in the addres bar:

https://www.hmv.co.jp/artist_三沢真帆-Cv-井口裕香_000000000459844/item_「ロウきゅーぶ!」キャラクターCD2-三沢真帆(CV井口裕香)_4126490

Where you can see the ID at the end, that can be used to build the short URL.

1 Like

A similar discussion from last year: Further suggestions for automatic cleanups of newly added external links

One potential difference is that shortened Discogs URLs still look very similar to the full URLs, while the shortened HMV URLs are completely different apart from the shared IDs.

HMV is still using the same free text principle as Discogs, except that the free text is before the ID instead of after it. :wink:

But the fact that it includes the artist in the path, structured as an artist folder on top of its items, is great for us, users, not annoying. :wink:

In an item page, I simply press Ctrl+Backspace to Go to Parent Directory (a keyboard shortcut you may have to setup), to go to the artist page.

1 Like

100% true. It would be a perfect world.

Ok, following the comment in the discussion thread introduced, this shortened URL is not actively annouced by HMV Japan, so I would drop this proposal. Thanks.

But the kind of short URL you showed is actually what HMV sends us in their new release notification emails (plus a trailing slash and some tracking query string):

https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/14564545/?site=mailmagart&utm_source=moa240312sa&utm_medium=other

So, it’s not crazy to use https://www.hmv.co.jp/product/detail/14564545

Which expands to https://www.hmv.co.jp/artist_AJICO_000000000168940/item_ラヴの元型-【初回限定盤】-DVD_14564545

For what it’s worth, my comment there was about the kind of change that does www.example.com/-/1234 (replacing the text with a required but empty fragment such as -). Your case seems to be the more straightforward dropping of sections entirely while keeping the ID, which we do fairly often.

1 Like