1

Why is it that when I do a search I get 10 results for the same song?

Why is it that I have to open up 3-20 links to get a full set of albums for a song.     
For instance    Look up Da' Butt by E.U. and hit enter.   You will see dozens of links and have to click on each one because none have the whole set.   Some show no albums..  others may show a few.  It is exhausting.  

 I am curious if something is broken or if it has always been this way?  I have another 1000-2000 songs to add albums too.  Allmusic has been great, but each tab bogs my i5 to work like a P3.

I really like the way they show the length of the tracks with the albums.  It really helps get the right album, which is cool... but having to pull up instances of all music is a time suck.

Follow

1 reply

Votes Newest Oldest

Unfortunately this largely has to do with how the artists are given credit on different releases.

We try to determine two different things based on the metadata in front of us.

The "Song" (meaning the text of the track title excluding punctuation PLUS the specific composers of that work) and the "Performance" (meaning the instance of that Song as performed by a performer or combination of performers).

In this instance, we have multiple Songs called "Da Butt" credited as being written by lots of different people. Some of these songs are credited as being written by M. Miller and M. Stevens. Another song was written by Marcus Miller and Mark Stevens. Another Song was just credited to M. Stevens. Yet another song was credited as being written by M. Miller and E. Stevens.

In the world of our database, a song called "Da Butt" written by Marcus Miller and Mark Stevens and a song called "Da Butt" written by M. Miller and M. Stevens are as different as a song called "Stairway to Heaven" composed by Jimmy Page / Robert Plant and a song called "Stairway to Heaven" composed by Howard Greenfield / Neil Sedaka.

It can be clunky, but unfortunately there isn't an easy data source of the hand of the almighty saying "This song is 'Da Butt' by these two dudes and no other 'Da Butt's shall exist."

As record labels abbreviate, make errors or leave credits off (especially on budget line compilations and releases) these outliers do appear in the data. The other option would be to send every new song entry through a series of lookups or manual queries, asking if this new instance of "Da Butt" composed by M. Miller and E. Stevens should actually be attributed to Marcus Miller and Mark Stevens.

If our data provider had unlimited staffing and unlimited time, they could try to identify every song that came through the system as compared to every other song in the system, and then override what the record label said to be what we believe in our hearts to be the truth, but the bandwidth simply isn't there to chase stuff like this down as tens of thousands of songs get added each week.

Comment
Reply