Jaikoz- Discussion Forum

What is the difference between "Year" (recording time) and "Release Time" and "Original Release Time"? Does MB keep that info and is it accessible? A quick look at my files shows only the year field populated.

It might be nice to distinguish between the date of a greatest hits release and the original release date. That would especially help when making date-based playlists.

mcammer wrote:

What is the difference between "Year" (recording time) and "Release Time" and "Original Release Time"? Does MB keep that info and is it accessible? A quick look at my files shows only the year field populated.

It might be nice to distinguish between the date of a greatest hits release and the original release date. That would especially help when making date-based playlists.

These fields are only available for MP3's, for MP3's the Year field maps to the TDRC field, as specified in the ID3v24 Changes doc http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-changes

TYER - Year
This frame is replaced by the TDRC frame, 'Recording time'
[F:4.2.5].

Year, is the year the recording was released on the release specified in the Album field.

From the ID3v24 Spec http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames you might think that TDRL would be more appropriate but all applications I know use TDRC.

TDOR
The 'Original release time' frame contains a timestamp describing
when the original recording of the audio was released. Timestamp
format is described in the ID3v2 structure document [ID3v2-strct].

TDRC
The 'Recording time' frame contains a timestamp describing when the
audio was recorded. Timestamp format is described in the ID3v2
structure document [ID3v2-strct].

TDRL
The 'Release time' frame contains a timestamp describing when the
audio was first released. Timestamp format is described in the ID3v2
structure document [ID3v2-strct].

Musicbrainz doesnt hold the extra information you ask about as such. But in Musicbrainz NGS it will be possible to find a recording and see what original releaes and compilations it was on and derive this information, but Im not aware of any players that make use of TDOR or TDRL.

I saw as much from putzing around on the NGS test server. However, my cursory investigation also showed the MB database is far from consistent or complete in keeping such data.

Like I said, it would be nice to have both the date of the actual release and the date of first release. However, there's no point coding that into Jaikoz if there's no way to record that in files or display/search for it in players. Sad, I was hoping otherwise.

Well maybe some players do use it, I just dont know of any, but a bit of investigation on your part might prove otherwise,