This is all quite aggravating TBH

So this form says there is already an entry for this act but when I click the suggestion to link it, I’m taken to a pointless page with no instruction how to proceed.



Also, as it DEMANDS that I provide a disambiguation comment, I paste the genre they are listed as on Google as I don’t feel it’s for me to sum up an act I haven’t ever heard or heard of until now, yet still the form is RED. Why?
Thanks.


Here’s another example, it suggests the artist already in the database but doesn’t tell me how to use it. The devs could really do with putting some pointers in as to what I’m supposed to do.
I click on the suggestion and it takes me to this…

…and I’m like, yes, this is the same dude. But I see no button to confirm this and complete the connection between this artist and the new release I’m adding. Why is that?

I did, simply to save all the stuff I’d submitted as I can’t keep this browser window open until somebody returns with an answer if that might be hours away or longer. Is there no way to save drafts?

Quite frankly, if the artist already exists, why are you still trying to create a new artist

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Because it doesn’t tell me how to confirm it’s the right one and connect it to this release entry, unless I’m missing something?


So now 've added this cluster as a release, how to I get Picard to gobble this cluster up and reveal it in the right hand side after finding it on MusicBrainz? I’ve tried both scan and lookup, and also looked up in browser but it only finds the artist, so I click the artist and find the release but when I click the teeny tiny green ‘tagger’ button, it doesn’t seem to register that I’m doing anything.

If you have the artist name, already filled-in on the input field – but you didn’t type it there, script filled it in – you need to put the cursor in the field (either with the mouse or tabbing to it) and then pretend like you just typed something, so that the routine to actually lookup the artist name in MB actually happens. I usually press “down arrow” or “up arrow” keys, but even the space bar works…

It’s not the worst pert of the UI, but it’s not that great either…

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When you click the tiny green button, it’ll put an empty “album” in that right side pane, and then you drag and drop the cluster from the left side pane onto that new album on the right side.

Oh, also pressing “Lookup” while having the cluster in the left pane highlighted, might possibly, lookup the new release you just added and move all the tracks over to the right automatically (so you don’t need to drag and drop them).

This doesn’t always work, I’ve had it occasionally not find the new release I just added, and sometimes it’ll lookup a different, but similarly named, release, which is not the one I just added.

So, I usually just cut & paste the URL of the new release as soon as I save it, and paste it into the search field at the top right edge of the window. (hit return) And then drag and drop the cluster onto that.

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I usually expand the album, cursor down the tracks of the album, one at a time, and check that the artist names, and song titles, an track lengths and stuff are all correct. Then I “Generate Fingerprints” and “Submit AcoustIDs” (if any new ones) and then save the resulting album (to update the metadata tags in the files themselves, and move the results into my ‘done’ directory.

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Thanks for all the suggestions even if I can’t quite understand just yet.
Another problem I’m having is how I create a new release for something which is incorrectly identified because as you can see here, it’s telling me it’s a green match when it clearly isn’t… so I guess I should submit AcousticID… but will that not add the audio fingerprint to the wrong release?

It’s weird because if I look up this particular track to find the one credited to include the feature from Ghostface Killah, it doesn’t find it, but in the browser it’s there and when I click the green tagger button nothing happens… As you can see there’s at least two entries for the same track on the same release so they firstly need to be merged. I press the tiny merge button in the right list on the page and instead of asking me which titles from that search result page are the same thing, it finds some totally random track I’ve never seen before instead.



Yeah, I’ve had that same kind of thing happen too… Don’t Submit an AcoustID for it…

So, if you use the “Lookup”, it does some kind of fuzzy string match with the title and maybe the track duration. If it doesn’t find an exact match, it’ll go with whatever the next closest match was… which is usually wrong.

Drag and drop the recording back off the album on the right, over to the left (either clustered or not). Then… this part takes some research…

Here are the possibilities:

  1. This recording doesn’t exist in MusicBrainz yet, so you’ll need to add it
  2. This recording does exist in MusicBrainz, and Picard didn’t find it, but you can find it with your own searching on the website (and maybe looking it up on Discogs, and then finding that it’s in MusicBrainz with a weird variation of its spelling, or someone entered some info incorrectly, or whatever.)
  3. This recording has two different names, and it is actually a correct match… but you really need to check! Google around, see with other databases say, since as ISWC and Discogs, and the record label’s site, or sometimes there’s a Redit post explaining what happened… Check the editing history on MusicBrainz, etc.

Most of the time it’s just not in MusicBrainz, and you can just add it… and even if it is, and you add a duplicate, that’s OK! Duplicates are much easier to deal with by future editors than needing to research and correct wrong data.

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This recording?

That’s all just one, single recording, there’s nothing to merge.

The three rows are the three albums this one recording appears on.

Ok, I figured out what’s going on… You want to use one of these two releases:

But Picard has loaded this one:

Which has the worst track list of the three… Notice, no featured artist credits, no track durations, etc.

So… the quick way to get what you want it to right-click on the album, mouse down the menu to “Other versions”, and then click on one of those two other releases…

(This should really be much more prominent in the UI, and I’ve been meaning to file a bug for it for a while…)

So… if you’re not in a hurry, and you’re into really really correct metadata… AND your release is not exactly one of those other two… you can add a new release for your exact copy… or… if your release is actually the low-quality-data one you currently have selected, then you can edit that release to bring all the data up to correctness.

(Someone’s going to need to do something about that release someday, it might be you…)

And, yeah, if you can determine that that low-quality-data release is actually the same as one of the other two, you can merge them together… Merge the releases together.

UPDATE:

These three releases can not be merged.

Each one is:

  1. An iTunes “Digital Media” release
  2. A regular 13-track CD
  3. A “Deluxe Edition” 14-track CD

So, personally, I’d just update the Deluxe Edition with all the correct artist credits and track durations. The easiest way I’ve found to do bulk editing of the track list is to use the “Track Parser” window to get the tracklist in flat ascii text, cut & paste the correct info into that, (parse the tracks), and then click on each of the newly added artist fields to select the actual artist so the field turns green and all that stuff… re-use the previous recordings, click on the checkboxes at the bottom to update the recording artists and recording titles, add an edit note and save.

(You can edit one of the other releases, go to the tracklist parser, select and copy all that text, and then paste it over the first 13 tracks of the other release, and manually fix track 14… I kinda prefer copying tracklists between releases this way, rather than selecting a “Release Duplicate”, and then modifying that… just because I can manually check for spelling and punctuation differences between releases this way (since I’m usually just importing all the data from Bandcamp or Discogs or something, and there’s always small differences between every source.))

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Thanks for taking the time to explain all this. I hope you don’t mind but I think I’ll hesitate before trying to correct all that at least until I’m more confident.
My files are ripped from Deezer so, even though the album title is in UPPER CASE, it’s how the distributor released it so is presumably accurate… In any case, I think I’ll just get my MP3s tagged up perfectly by comparing what, if anything, is on Discogs and MB to what’s on these Deezer rips and add any missing guest artists using Get Info on iTunes or MP3Tag, and then load them up into Picard, add cluster as release and merge which hopefully will let me see just the changes and not EVERYTHING, which is quite overwhelming, then I can accept/deny each amended track title and submit it all for voting.

I can’t emphasise enough - NEVER assume that how the distributor released it is accurate, especially on digital platforms.

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Well, I think we (meaning the OP) needs to be a little more descriptive. Maybe start over from the beginning.
Previous responses were regarding the website. But some of your screenshots are Picard.

It makes a difference.

Why should we NEVER assume that how the distributor released it is accurate, especially on digital platforms? I’m talking about legit sites like Spotify not pirates.

IMO,
Spotify is accurate, in terms of what was presented to it. But it is not always accurate due to what was presented to it.

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If you’ve dealt with a few Amazon releases (the worst) then you’ll understand the sentiment - the people working in the sweatshop that produces that borked data weren’t hired for their love of accurate music representation.

Spotify/Deezer/iTunes etc is better but at the end of the day it’s often a label employee tap-tapping away, inputting data. We value artist intent (a murky term, no doubt) over what that employee decided to type into Spotify that morning. So if you have reason to believe that the artist didn’t want that title to be in all caps*, you can definitely ‘fix’ the MB Spotify entry. When in doubt, just import the release as-is :ok_hand:

*for instance, it’s not in caps on any other releases, press releases, etc

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I try to find a physical release if possible and see if they have back cover art. Sometimes, they’ll be in all caps on all the services, but then not on the physical release or the artists website, etc.