Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Music Database for older recordings (Read 1769 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Music Database for older recordings

Pre magnetic tape (and certainly pre digital!) recordings were identified by near-unique matrix numbers. Hence one way to identify a particular recording from before ~1950, whether it's on its original release, vinyl re-issue, CD, or download is by that matrix original number. Many discographies relate recording information (artist(s), date, location, title(s) etc) to that matrix number.

I'm trying to find something, a bit like Musicbrainz or Discogs (or maybe I'm just looking for a different way of using one of those) where I can store and look things up using the matrix number, in addition to all the usual methods you'd expect to use. It should be able to hold all the useful discographic information (e.g. on jazz releases, it should be possible to include all the players and the instrument they're playing). It should be possible to do CD lookups in one of the "normal" ways, yet know that track 1 is a re-issue of HMV matrix 1234 from 1932 (or easily create that link when someone first enters details for the CD), and thereby have all the information from that original recording related to the CD re-issue without having to re-enter it.

Musicbrainz seems to get so close, by understanding the relationship between composition, recording, and release - but as far as I can see, it doesn't have a clue about matrix numbers. While it has a mapping for involved persons, I can't figure out how to enter it.

Any ideas / suggestions?

I'm not talking about a local database on my PC. I know I could make something up for my own needs, but I was hoping that there was something on-line and collaborative out there with relevance to the original recordings and their CD (and other) re-issues. Obviously a local database that linked in to something else would be fine.

Cheers,
David.

Music Database for older recordings

Reply #2 –
Discogs does have an advanced search interface, but on Discogs you can only enter what's actually printed/stamped/etched on a release you have in hand. So to the extent that a matrix is visible on an old 78 you physically possess, you can transcribe it (verbatim, typos and what you may think of as extra non-matrix data) into the "Matrix / Runout" field with an accompanying Description field that specifies where on the release it is (label or runout, and which side).

But this isn't structured formally enough to map to specific songs or even reliably map to specific sides. It also won't help you correlate that matrix to other appearances of the same recording, or remastered versions thereof, on other releases, physical or digital, because you can't enter that data on releases it doesn't appear on.

In theory, a programmer could utilize the MusicBrainz and Discogs APIs in their own app, website, or browser extension which would annotate or supplement Discogs data with info from elsewhere. I would've thought such things would already exist for cross-referencing track data in Discogs with externally sourced databases for BPM, sample IDs, riddims, composition/song titles, rights organization database stuff, ISRCs, and other recording IDs like you mention ... but no such luck.

Music Database for older recordings

Reply #3 –
Have you tried contacting MusicBrainz to ask them to add support for Matrix numbers? It seems like something that would be interesting for MusicBrainz to have.
You could add an issue for it or send a mail to their style mailing list.

Music Database for older recordings

Reply #4 –
Thank you.

Blimey, ISWCs are interesting things. I hadn't tried http://iswcnet.cisac.org/iswcnet/logon.do before, and was surprised by how well the composer look up works. No good for out of copyright recordings though.

I have submitted a request via the MusicBrainz Jira. We'll see if it goes anywhere.

I've been typing in tracklists from re-issue CDs, thinking "This is a waste of time. There's full discographical information available for this which I could enter once and then link to each time this recording crops up, but there's no point if I have to leave the most important parts out."

Cheers,
David.

Music Database for older recordings

Reply #6 –
It's not (yet) in any database. The only place the track list exists on-line is on the website of the original record company. I can (with a little bit of care) copy+paste from that to tags, but that's not the point of this thread

Cheers,
David.