What to do when the Jacket of a CD contains printing errors?

TLDR:

  • The CD release in question was a limited edition, with just one print run
  • It contained a printing error (mislabeled title and misattributed artist credit) impacting a specific recording/track that escaped through when I was first entering it
  • The same album was then re-released digitally, with the track title/credit error corrected

So I was working on releases Release “まいてつ Last Run!! Vocal Complete Album リマスター版” by Lose - MusicBrainz (digital release) and Release “爱上火车-Last Run!!- Special Song Collection” by Lose - MusicBrainz today, and noticed recording Recording “Indivisible Love ハチロクver” by 桐谷華 - MusicBrainz in these two releases have different titles and artist credits compared to that in Release “まいてつ Last Run!! Vocal Complete Album リマスター版” by Lose - MusicBrainz (CD release). After listening through the actual song, I was able to confirm the following facts:

  • All three releases indeed contain recording Recording “Indivisible Love ハチロクver” by 桐谷華 - MusicBrainz (at 1:23, 1:14, and 1:14) respectively.
  • The last release, which is the earliest of three and the only one that is a physical CD, has a printing error that labeled the track as Indivisible Love ハチロクver (should be Indivisible Love 稀咲ver).
  • This error has been corrected in the two digital releases that were created later.
  • The CD release was a limited edition, and no official online discography page exists. Therefore the only source of reference is indeed the jacket of the CD, so the printing error propagated to the MB entry of the CD release.

What should I do now? I have already submitted edits for correcting the track titles in Release “まいてつ Last Run!! Vocal Complete Album リマスター版” by Lose - MusicBrainz (the digital release) that was propagated from the CD release, as well as information on the actual recording. However, shall I also correct the CD release, or shall I leave the CD release as-is to document this error that existed on the CD jacket?

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I’m not following from your post what the error is. However, clear errors should be corrected per Style / Principle / Error correction and artist intent - MusicBrainz .

You could also add to the CD release an annotation indicating that the track title is misprinted.

If there were two otherwise identical physical versions, one with the printing error and one without, then ideally both should be in the database with disambiguations to differentiate the two.

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Basically the following:

  • The CD release was a limited edition, with just one print run
  • It contained a printing error (mislabeled title and misattributed artist credit) impacting a specific recording/track that escaped through when I was first entering it
  • The same album was then re-released digitally, with the track title/credit error corrected

In this case, shall I still go ahead and correct the CD release? Or just correcting the digital release is enough?

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I would say best practice is to correct the CD release and add an annotation: “Track #N is mislabeled on the CD cover as…”

9 Likes

Are you sure of the content of the CD edition? Do you have it?
Sometimes, DL vs CD editions or regular vs limited editions can have exclusive tracks.

2 Likes

I have all three. In fact, the artwork at Release “まいてつ Last Run!! Vocal Complete Album リマスター版” by Lose - Cover Art - MusicBrainz are all scanned by myself. I have listened through the track in question on all three to come to the conclusion.

6 Likes

Great! And you have written the release annotation. :slight_smile: :+1:

1 Like