Thanks for the link. Yes, it is helpful to a certain extent, nevertheless, many of the fields to be entered are gobbledygook to me!
I have an album (two, actually) from Nate Najar Trio. This trio can be found in the MusicBrainz’s databank, but it the album ‘Christmas With the Nate Najar Trio’ and the one Id like to add to the databank is ‘Aquarela Do Brasil’.
Now when I start the editing process, I fill out the Name in the Artist Details field and it asks for a mandatory Disambiguation (see attached file). No idea what this is! Also, what are the IPI and ISNI codes and where can I find them?
Your manually entered artist “Nate Najar Trio” already exists.
This is why you should choose/click on the presented Nate Najar Trio below “following entries with very similar names”.
You only have to enter a disambiguation, if you are absolutely sure that your “Nate Najar Trio” is a completely different artist then the already existing one. In such a case you need to add a disambiguation like “the one from America who plays classical guitar within the jazz tradition” or something like that.
For the other fields: Fill in whatever you know for sure, from the booklet or reliable sources. If you don’t know the IPI let it empty. Not all the fields are mandatory.
Yes, when the artist already exists there’s no need to add it. If you go to the artist page, you can click “add release” in the right sidebar, and it will make a new release (album) for you with the artist already populated.
Thanks so much, @InvisibleMan78 and @psychoadept for your suggestions! with your help I managed to get the release added to MusicBrainz’ database (see screenshot). I need to check if it can be identified once I put it through my MusicBrainz Picard.
There are still things I don’t understand, so I had to leave quite a few things open. But I try to improve as I go along with additional albums.
One of your sources is Discogs. You have set your own release here at MB to the format “Digital Media”. But the linked Discogs-release is a CD. Do you have the information from your digital release or from your CD?
You can see in this list what formats are possible.
(Don’t worry, there are some veeeery rare entries…)
And a very personal wish:
Please add cover art to your release(s). This will help to identify them and help other users (for example, by using Picard as tagging software).
The best way to learn is make lots of mistakes. Then just post here and people will set you straight and guide you through the confusion that is MB. After a few releases you’ll start to understand the logic in the madness.
Within Picard you have options to speed up some of the adding of a new release. For example, having track in a “cluster” on the left, you can Right Click, the select PLUGINS, and ADD RELEASE AS CLUSTER. That gets you going by adding all the track titles in.
If you have the CD, there is another option to upload that CD direct to your newly added Release which can then set more accurate track time.
By setting it to Digital Media, I thought to reflect how I obtained the album, namely as a digital download. Now I see that I should register the album as a CD.
Tried to add cover art, but it didn’t work (so far) with my jpeg file. Will work on it!
No, I don’t have the CD. It’s a digital download. That’s why I have to enter things manually, at least I think. I still find it difficult for me to adapt
If you got it in digital format, that’s what you should set it to. Just don’t link to discogs, amazon etc pages for a CD. You can always add a second release if you need to capture the CD links. (Once it’s in the database, you can base a new release on the existing one so you don’t have to enter every detail from scratch.)
Load the files up in Picard, use the CLUSTER button to gather them together on the left hand side. Now RIGHT CLICk and select PLUGINS and ADD CLUSTER AS RELEASE. That will start off your new Release in MB with all the that are currently in your tags. Saves some typing.
I don‘t have CD rips at all. I download my albums in digital formats, like AIFF, and put them onto my SonicTransporter to have them available in Roon. So everything is digital.
If you are buying/getting these albums from a legit digital source, then please add a digital release to MB, that is correct
If you are getting them from ‘other’ places then please do not add a digital media release if it is likely to be ripped from a CD (for instance no digital store version exists). Then it’s best to add the CD rather than creating a bootleg digital media release for every blog and torrent out there.
Note: that’s not an accusation aimed at you, but a bit of further explanation of my gist for anybody who reads this thread
Thanks for your suggestions! No problem whatsoever, I am in a learning phase, so I do need help from you experts!
Indeed, I buy my albums mostly from Qobuz, earlier also from HDtracks. But albums from HDtracks often had problematic metadata associated with them and I had trouble matching them with the MB database. I never ran into problems with Qobuz, that’s why I am using this exclusively as my digital download store.
So, should I add a Qobuz link from which I downloaded the album?
another problem that will hopefully help me in my MB learning curve:
Yesterday, I uploaded an album from Curtis Fuller (Soul Trombone / Cabin in the sky). After completing tracks, track lengths, and album cover, I checked the album on MB today. The release icon tells me that Picard encounters a problem and when clicking on the release icon, MB tells me that there was an error in transferrin the cover art. However, when looking up the album in the MB database, it shows me the correct album artwork that I uploaded yesterday.
What can I do to complete the form so that the release icon turns to orange?
Perhaps you could try with the other sizes and see if that works?
I’m not sure why this size is missing. It may be that it will be generated later. It is done by the Internet Archive instead of MusicBrainz so there is little that can be done from this side.
The options are 250px, 500px, 1200px amd full size. The fixed sizes are generated automatically from the full size image, provided that it is greater than or equal to the fixed size being generated.
If I understand it correctly, a 500x500px cover art as example will never appear as (blown up) 1200px variant. Or I’m wrong?
People may also then add iTunes, Spotify, HDTracks links to that same Digital Media edition.
