Typos and version details

MusicBrainz Style
1

So, wrt aliases for a track or album name… Not quite sure what they do when they’re made, but I’ve been adding them for material from bands and artists I’m on promo duty for. Added typos (missing apostrophes, commas in track names), and version identifiers (‘explicit’, for tracks that would typically be explicit, and for the projects they’re on, as well as adding EP to the EP titles etc). But I’m not quite sure what’s meant by either ‘recording name’ or ‘search hint’. What’s the distinction for my purposes between those classes of track name/ project name variations that people and platforms come up with?

1 Like
2

Are you talking about recording aliases?
I usually don’t use them, there would be too many of them to manage.
I prefer use work aliases.
But anyway.

For all aliases:

  • Entity name alias: All official names, in this or that language. Official as they are printed on this or that release, in any languages.
  • Search hint alias: Typos, version names could also go there, unofficial names.
2 Likes
3

I tried to do all of the ones that could be antipicated, because I thought it might stop last.fm listing duplicates. In such cases as These Are the Days, and These Are the Days [EP] being the same record, or ‘It Doesn’t Matter What I Say’ and 'It Doesn’t Matter What I Say [explicit] being the same track, or Just Another Guy (acoustic) and ‘Just Another Guy - acoustic’ being the same track, just tagged differently. Seems the site’s influence doesn’t go that far though…

So, now I think about it, is there a decent reason for me to have made the kinds of aliases that I described in the first place? Does that fulfil some kind of useful function? Or should I just delete them?

Edit: Yes, recording aliases.

2 Likes
4

actually, I believe {entity} name aliases don’t need to be official to be added, based on the Aliases page in the docs.

my personal thought on aliases, the more the better. I dunno if you need to go as far as adding an alias for both Just Another Guy (acoustic) and ‘Just Another Guy - acoustic’ but it definitely wouldn’t hurt either~

3 Likes
5

I think the search ignores punctuation, so you may not need both.

1 Like
6

Oh, interesting. Best practice would be to cut down on redundant entries, so if they don’t register, I guess it’d only need to be done in this case for version names on the same track (e.g. if there was an album version that you’d call ‘album version’, except in context of the album, or similar with ‘explicit’ tags, etc.)?

1 Like