** MusicBrainz Website Tutorial **

• Objective
• What is MusicBrainz
• Musical Release?
• Musical release in MusicBrainz?
• Musical Release in Freebase

The objective of this tutorial module is to make the contributors familiar with MusicBrainz - one of the top source for Music Domain used by the JC team . This tutorial will describe the entities and the terms related to that entity which will help the contributors in making judgments. Here are the top entities which will be in focus:

1. Musical Release

2. Musical Artist (Work in Progress)

3. Music Album (Work in Progress)

4. Musical Recording (Work in Progress)

Note - A common search technique ("How to Search") would also be added at the end of the tutorial

MusicBrainz is an open music encyclopedia that collects music metadata and makes it available to the public.It is the ultimate source of music information by allowing anyone to contribute and releasing the data under open licenses.

MusicBrainz has expanded its goals to reach beyond a compact disc metadata storehouse to become a structured open online database for music.MusicBrainz captures information about artists, their recorded works, and the relationships between them

Web Address- musicbrainz.org/

Created By- Robert kaye

MusicBrainz is operated by the MetaBrainz Foundation, a California based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit corporation dedicated to keeping MusicBrainz free and open source.

**Releas**e

A Music Release is a collection of Musical Tracks (recordings of Songs) released in a common format such as Compact Disc or LP. A release is typically associated with a Musical Artist unless it is a compilation which is a collection of tracks by various artists. (These releases will not have a value for the Artist property at all).

Difference Between Release & Release Group

A release group, just as the name suggests, is used to group several different releases into a single logical entity. Every release belongs to one, and only one release group.

Both release groups and releases are "albums" in a general sense, but with an important difference: a release is something you can buy as media such as a CD or a vinyl record, while a release group embraces the overall concept of an album -- it doesn't matter how many CDs or editions/versions it had.

When an artist says "We've released our new album", they're talking about a release group. When their publisher says "This new album gets released next week in Japan and next month in Europe", they're referring to the different releases that belong in the above mentioned release group.

A MusicBrainz release represents the unique release (i.e. issuing) of a product on a specific date with specific release information such as the country, label, barcode, packaging, etc. If you walk into a store and purchase an album or single, they're each represented in MusicBrainz as one release.Each release belongs to a release group and contains at least one medium (commonly referred to as a disc when talking about a CD release).

Each release belongs to a release group and contains at least one medium (commonly referred to as a disc when talking about a CD release). Each medium has a tracklist.

A medium is the actual physical medium the audio content is stored upon. This means that each CD in a multi-disc release will be entered as separate mediums within the release, and that both sides of a vinyl record or cassette will exist on one medium. Mediums have a format (e.g. CD, DVD, vinyl, cassette) and can optionally also have a title.

Tracklists represent the set and ordering of tracks as listed on a liner, and the same tracklist can appear on more than one release. For example, a boxset compilation that contains previously released CDs would share the same tracklists as the separate releases.

Examples

• CD single: Creep

• 2xCD album: The Fragile

• Vinyl single: Feel the Music

• 2xVinyl album: Blonde on Blonde

Release Properties in MusicBrainz

• Title- The title of the release.

• Artist- The artist(s) that the release is primarily credited to.

• Date- The date the release was issued.

• Country- The country the release was issued in.

• Label- The label which issued the release.There may be more than one.

• Catalogue Number- This is a number assigned to the release by the label which can often be found on the spine or near the barcode. There may be more than one, especially when multiple labels are involved.

• Barcode-The barcode, if the release has one. The most common types found on releases are 12-digit UPCs and 13-digit EANs.(A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data relating to the object to which it is attached)

• Status- The status describes how "official" a release is. Possible values are:

official Any release officially sanctioned by the artist and/or their record company. Most releases will fit into this category. promotional A give-away release or a release intended to promote an upcoming official release (e.g. pre-release versions, releases included with a magazine, versions supplied to radio DJs for air-play). bootleg An unofficial/underground release that was not sanctioned by the artist and/or the record company. This includes unofficial live recordings and pirated releases. pseudo-release An alternate version of a release where the titles have been changed. These don't correspond to any real release and should be linked to the original release using the transl(iter)ation relationship.

• Packaging- The physical packaging that accompanies the release.

• Language- The language a release’s track list is written in.

• Script- The Script used to write the release’s track list.

• Format- The format of the medium. Normally a release will be distributed on multiple media with different catalog numbers and barcodes; each should have a separate release event.

  Common Release Formats:
  

• CD

• DVD

• Vinyl

• Digital Media

• Digital Compact Cassette (DCC)

• Blu-ray

• 7″ Vinyl (17 cm)

• 10″ Vinyl (25 cm)

• 12″ Vinyl (30 cm)

A Music Release is a collection of Musical Tracks (recordings of Songs) released in a common format such as Compact Disc or LP. A release is typically associated with a Musical Artist unless it is a compilation which is a collection of tracks by various artists. (These releases will not have a value for the Artist property at all)

A Musical Release is specifically a release of a particular Musical Album; a single album may have multiple releases, while a release should be a release of one specific album. A Musical Release may be a remastering, an international version, or some other minor variation, but would not typically merit a separate entry in an artist’s discography.

Examples:

• Blood on the Tracks

• Decade

• Ride the Lightning

Release Properties in Freebase

• Release Date - The date of the particular release (Equivalent to "** Date **" in MusicBrainz)

• Running Time - The length of the release in seconds

• Label - The record company label which issued the record (Equivalent to "** Label **" in MusicBrainz

• Track List - The tracks on the release

• Release of - Album of which this release is

• Catalog Number - Similar to MusicBrainz

• Region - Country/Region in which the release was launched

• Format - Similar to MusicBrainz

Comparision - MusicBrainz and Freebase

Legend for above Image

1 - Release Date
2 - Run Time / Length of Release
3 - Label
4 - Catalog Number
5 - Region
6 - Format