Greetings from The Bicycling Guitarist. I have a couple hundred of my original songs in the Musicbrainz database as works and standalone recordings. I have several groupings of songs past and present. I would like to make a “release” of songs that go together as in the playlists of my YouTube channel or the groupings on my official website’s “songs” page.
For example there are a dozen songs from 2000 to 2015 that could be grouped as a “release” titled When you ride over sharps, you get flats! How do I go about doing that, or am I way off course here?
Hi,
Generally, you don’t release “recordings”, always “releases”. If they are released as individual tracks, they are single releases. If several tracks are grouped together, you have an album release. That means, you have to create a release (“Add release”) with one or more tracks, which you have to link to the recording. You can search and select the existing recordings in the “Recordings” tab. Then the recordings are no longer stand-alone.
The better (easier) approach would be to start with the release. If no recordings exist yet, new recordings with the same title as the tracks will be created automatically as soon as the release is submitted (“Enter edit”). After that, you can add further information to the recordings, e.g. works and instrument credits.
A “Release group” (which represents an album or single and may include more than one release) will be added automatically too (if there is no existing release group to add it to) and can be edited afterwards.
I made an attempt at a “release” of “When you ride over sharps, you get flats!” album from 2017. I linked the ten tracks each to its own page on the Internet Archive with options to download or stream them. I just noticed that the individual song entries on MB are now linked to the album I created! YAY!
I found E Update didn’t have a page on Internet Archive, or in Musicbrainz. I hurriedly created a page on the Archive to be consistent with the other tracks of my first release, and will create work and recording pages soon here for that song.
I will shut up now and wait for advice. I just noticed that songs now have duplicate listings, one that shows them as part of the album and one that doesn’t. So the new album may not have linked appropriately with the corresponding MB entries of the songs listed.
The “Download for Free” links should be on the Recordings. As those links are per Recording.
The reason you now have two recordings is when adding the Release, you made new Recordings. When on the Recordings tab you forgot to search and link up to your previous Recording.
To fix the problem of twice as many Recordings as you planned, it may be quickest to look at your main Artist / Recordings page The Bicycling Guitarist - Recordings - MusicBrainz as it is then easy to spot the pairs on here. Now, for example, tick the boxes next to the two copies of “I didn’t know she was crazy” and the press the button at the bottom of the page to “Merge selected recordings”.
Where are these tracks grouped? I don’t see how the tracks are released as a cohesive album. You’ve only linked individual downloads. An album isn’t released (created) on MB - it’s documented here. The release have to exist somewhere else.
Are all the recordings videos? If yes, the newly created recordings should be “merged” into the existing video recordings. As soon as the merges are applied (after a week or earlier, if you get 3 yes votes from other editors), the relationships of the existing recordings will appear on the release page.
(In case they are not, the video recordings should be linked as music videos → go to the recording, Edit, Add relationship, Related type Recording, Relationship type “music video for”, select the recording to be linked, adjust “Direction”, Enter)
An album release requires a place where the whole album is available. There has to be a title for the release. You could still make such a release with these tracks, but the release date would be the day the complete album is publicly available.
“here is my first attempt to make a MusicBrainz “release” of some of my original songs which have been presented in the form of an album for many years.”
Thank you all who are helping me figure this out. As I see it, even though I am not being publishef by a music industry corporation I have the RIGHT as the artist to release albums of songs.
Not all the songs for any of my albums came out at once. For example, for several years I would pick a particular chat room on an internet chat site and for one season, say Spring 2020, I would then create songs for and about chatters of that room. I would start the “album” early on by putting them into a named playlist on YouTube . When that season was done, I had eight songs that then were grouped together as “Spring 2020” album. I did this several years for that chat site. So, at the end of each season and forever afterwards all the songs of that “album” ARE available at once and in one place and grouped together by a theme.
I will merge the recordings that are relevant to my first attempted "release” on Musicbrainz.
The places this album are available were on the youtube platform, and usually also internet archive, plus my official website which has been at its own domain years before youtube started. and even if not for sale (because they are for free) what I call albums are available several places, and do have release dates which would be when the albums were complete. For example, I am not likely now to add to the Spring 2020 album. So the release date of that album is the date the last song was posted.
Some of my songs are audio and only audio except for lyrics videos, some start as videos but I sometimes extract separate audio files and include those on the internet archive for dozens of songs there for years along with the video files for each song.
Hi Weblate and ty for your info. The format is that these are available anytime for free download or streaming, and they are organized or structured as an album in more than one place online (my official website, media platforms, internet archive). I had CDs once for a long-ago album, but I can’t afford that now. I am low-income sharing what I do some of which brings joy to others. That’s the only return.
If a set of songs in a particular order organized that way a particular time in three separate places can be considered an album and since they do have dates when completed and are available as that set of songs all at once I don’t see why not. Most of my publishing is digital only but anyone can take what I give and use whatever medium is most convenient for them.
OK.
If the system won’t let you create a release, create a collection as @jesus2099 suggested.
I’ve also heard about the possibility of recording your own CD-R and calling it a “Homebrew”.
What you are describing sounds like an album Release to me. If the website is public, it is much more than a playlist. It does not sound much different than if you had a Bandcamp account. Just you are doing this as a private person.
It sounds like you have clear release dates, and selections of tracks with their own title. That’s an album.
If you were just making a playlist up for a few mates, then it would be in that homebrew category. But this sounds more like creation of new music, with a theme to it, collected into a specific release, and available to your fans.
I wouldn’t overdo it. One release is probably enough. It’s not unusual that some tracks of an album were available before the album release. This information can be noted in an annotation.
the ”albums” are not released several times. They are released in pieces though, one or two songs at a time, until all of the works of a particular “album” are posted. Then that date is the release date of the album per se. I’m not trying to make trouble here. I have the feeling of falling through the cracks of any system. That has been normal for my entire life.
