You can not do that. DiscIDs are not that unique. At this moment I am adding an Enigma release for my CD in hand where many Releases legitimately share the same DiscID. EMI UDEN and EMI SWINDON were pressing the same CD for many years across Europe and changes happened to the CD packaging cause multiple Releases. But the CD stays the same.
In that example I expect the USA release can be removed as it is a scrappy entry, but the UK and Euro editions are verified to be using the same CD. (Okay - you made me brave enough to drop the link to the USA Release as the USA release is scrappy)
Same happens with PDO\PMDC\etc pressings. And other plants. The same plant presses the same DiscID for many years, but different Releases are required due to packaging\company changes. A focus is needed on the factory before removing DiscIDs.
(I am spending way too many hours digging into this subject )
Edit: Between phone calls I was digging more. This same DiscID is shown as attached to an Australian release. And edit notes confirm that too. It is a good example of how one CD Master can travel far and wide…
You totally can, and imo should (if they are pre-NGS IDs).
There’s little value to a user in your addition of a DiscID to a correct release if it’s on a bunch of others as well, with no way to know which is correct. The user is just getting a ‘fuzzy’ match to a random release in the release group, maybe right, maybe wrong.
As long as there is still that discID in the release group there is no downside for the tagger, even if they have a different CD.
If you remove the others they are getting a 100% match to a CD with that DiscID. That is different to “they are getting matched to the only CD with that DiscID that exists” because, as you say, multiple CDs can have the same DiscID. But it is still a substantial improvement over “who knows if this CD has this DiscID”.
And they have no way of knowing if they are getting the right release.
Each one of those people could be adding their ID to the correct release, if the DB hasn’t already peppered their DiscID everywhere, making it pointless.
If you don’t remove discID’s they, and future users, can literally never assume they will get the right release from a DiscID lookup
If you don’t know if something is true, it’s not great data.
If you know that a lot of it is wrong I’m happy to call it bad data (doesn’t = bad editors, just talking about the dataset)
Please look into the example I added about Enigma. I added an EMI Swindon pressing today. If I had deleted all other references to that DiscID I would have caused real issues and damaged database quality. There are many other Releases sharing that ID - most of the EMI UDEN presses and an Australian press. Edit Histories clearly show this. I’ve done too much reading of those edit notes today.
You must be careful removing DiscIDs blindly. Yes, if a release has next to no actual user edits and it is just pre-NGS, then it is suspect. But in this example many of the Releases attached to that DiscID had been clearly validated as legit in the edit histories. You must look at the factories involved. DiscIDs are not a one to one mapping with Releases. You cannot assume your Release is the only one with that DiscID.
I do get your points that most pre-NGS data is unreliable confusion, but you can’t just make assumptions about all old data.
This is also why I keep adding Release links to the manufacturers to make clean ups like this easier to happen.
As @aerozol said I was telling this for pre-NGS releases (all seen in the same add release edit), where you see a bunch of editions in the same edit and you have the same bunch of disc ID in each post-NGS split releases.
Some disc ID edits will tell for which versions they were made so you can keep them there.
But otherwise, when you have confirmed an edition, remove the bogus disc ID from there and if there is no confirmation for your disc ID on another edition, remove it from there (it will still be attached to your edition).
Wow, yes. That happened to me recently. A brand-new editor appears out of nowhere and as it its very first edit attaches a DiscID to a release that has two already. So I welcome the newcomer to MB and ask to check whether the cover art matches their copy. Later I find three cancelled edits to remove the DiscID and the editor transformed to “Deleted Editor #xxxxx”. Oops. Was it something I said?
Of course, the DiscID is uniquely attached to this release. Remove? Leave it?
If a polite request for confirmation of an edit upset them, then they are in the wrong place. You probably saved them from deeper arguments they would have inevitably walked into.
Remove. Attempt to verify did not get a verification.
Not everyone cares for accuracy or understands. When I first used Picard many years ago I would attach my DiscIDs to the earliest GB releases without doing any checks. Now years later I go into geek knowledge overload. It is easy for a new user to not really understand the subtle differences.
Sometimes this is also why I like leaving one or two releases with those 20 discIDs attached as a magnet for those lazy taggers to get a reply from…
I remember seeing some discussion about disc IDs which reported 2 extra seconds on the final track. Is there a known issue involving all tracks except the last being 2 seconds longer? For example Disc ID “b2B_m88N7PhkWPRgc0NiIOl5.0M-” - MusicBrainz which is attached to multiple releases of London Calling (from pre-NGS days). Comparing it to the 1987 US CD it’s exactly 2 seconds longer on all but the last track. I’ve seen something like it once or twice before. Maybe an indication of a home-burned CD that wasn’t burned in gapless mode?
If all tracks are 2 second longer except the last track.
It looks like this is someone who ripped a commercial CD and then burnt it on a CD-R, drag on dropping ripped wav files into a burning software, without taking much care of a100% identical result at the ripping step (mostly) nor at the burning step.
IMO check the add disc ID edit but I think we could safely remove this disc ID.
I have seen this several times before, and at its worst was 6 seconds longer on each track except the last. I think this is due to sloppy reissuing of a release, not necessarily a home-burned CD (but could be).
I almost always check my added Disc ID against existing ones to insure it is close to the ones already present. I added one that was 6 seconds more per track except the last track (I wonder if I can find it) and it was a official release, a compilation I think, here were existing Disc ID’s that had 2 seconds more track and 4 seconds more per track except the last track. I looked at my rip in Audacity and there was 8 seconds of silence between the tracks except the last track. I this case I am sure it was sloppy reissuing of a release, since you have the CD jut rip it and remaster it with the required/suggested 2 seconds of silence/gap between the tracks. The last track does not get the 2 seconds of silence.
If it was a reissue, then it would have been a new Release? The above example by @highstrung is talking about pre-NGS lists of the same discID attached to multiple old releases.
Your example would create a new release and not get tied up with older Releases.
Very possible that it is a “new release” of an existing release, can you say that for a fact? Some part of what is in the DB is subjective and always be. We could have a rule that a Disc ID of this type is a new release, I think there is enough justification for the rule.
Surely it is a different release if there are four to eight second gaps between the tracks? That is quite a change to the original version.
I’ve seen CDs with a second or two on the reissue, but nothing that large.
I also see many many old pre-NGS edits where they are directly targeting the home burnt CDs and taking things out that have that two second gap added by old CD burners.
Yes it is a mess, not intentional, but without the edit history it can be time consuming and judgmental as to the fix. Unless it is really obvious I just grind my teeth and go on about my business. Slightly off Disc ID’s generally do not harm anything unless the are applied to the release. I find the sub-second editing of a track time to be superfluous since most CDs contain a two second gap that gets counted as part of the track time and the Disc ID, but that is my opinion.
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