Topic: Adding missing album cover images and track lists

This is something that I've wondered about for a long time, so I thought it was about time that I asked the question. For some less well-known releases that I have added, there are no album covers or track listings showing on AP even some weeks or months after the albums were added.

As an example, let's consider the band Kainos, from Norway: https://awesomeprog.com/artists/26618.

They have released two albums, in 1978 and 1980 (https://awesomeprog.com/releases/84094 and https://awesomeprog.com/releases/84093). Both are on Spotify and Amazon, where the cover images and track lists can easily be found, but that's it as far as supported links are concerned.

The AP website only automatically adds album cover images and track listings from the Bandcamp, MusicBrainz and PA links, which are all unavailable for these two albums, but on both their pages on AP we have the line which says: "No tracks found. We are currently adding tracks for all the releases in the database, prioritising by number of ratings, year of release and "age".

Below this line, when you first visit those two album pages there is a link in green saying "finalize tracklist", but when you click on it the link just vanishes, and doesn't return when you refresh the page or re-open it in another browser window. What is that link supposed to allow you to do in order to finalize a track list?

For missing album cover images there is no manual method of adding them as far as I can see, and the automatic bots don't always do the job even after the albums concerned have been added to PA (I've just added the missing PA links to the first three Aching Hands albums which were added to PA several days ago).

What is your advice for users regarding missing album covers and track listings on the pages of the albums that they have added to AP? I always feel that my job isn't finished when I add a release to the site and there is no album cover or track listing shown on the page.

Thanks.

Thanks for the question! To answer it properly, we'll need to look at cover art and track lists separately.

Cover Art: When you add links to a release, the system can currently only import cover art from Musicbrainz and Bandcamp. We also use cover art from PA, but there are manual steps involved for each release to overcome the anti-bot measures, so it only works when I have done these preparations for the particular link you use. For the remaining releases, where there isn't cover art available from Musicbrainz, Bandcamp or PA I have to do it manually. We also used to import cover art from Amazon, but I stopped that since Amazon kicked us out of the affiliate program for undisclosed reasons. And we generally don't import anything from Spotify for legal reasons. RYM is also very touchy with anti-bot measures ...

Track Lists: Currently we only automatically import tracks from Bandcamp and Musicbrainz. The PA tracklists are too free-form (added as part of the release description) to be imported by a script. The fact that you can see the "finalize tracklist" link is interesting - it's a bug. We actually do have the UI to add tracks manually, and I sometimes do it for the releases where we have no data that can be imported manually. "Finalizing" is the last step there, after adding all the tracks we disable editing to prevent uncontrolled modification. I'll look into opening up the tracklist editing functionality for selected users - in general I want to limit editing permissions as much as possible.

Finally, about the sentence "We are currently adding tracks for all the releases in the database, prioritising by number of ratings, year of release and "age"": This refers to the time I invest personally to add tracks manually. It's a really time-consuming thing, so I try to prioritize interesting releases, basically. In effect this means that I'm regularly browsing the charts as well as the new releases (calendar), and I'm usually spending some time every day adding missing links, adding tracks, and generally correcting mistakes such as duplicate artists and releases.

Sometimes it feels like a never-ending job, and of course it is, as new releases keep coming in every day at a faster pace than we can handle. So we have to a) prioritize high-quality releases and b) automate the work as much as possible :-)

Thanks for the really detailed reply explaining how everything works regarding the import of track lists/timings and album covers, Mike. I must admit, I hadn't thought about the anti-bot measures that some of these sites use, and the resulting need for human intervention in order to get around these.

Here is another album that I added about three weeks ago with just the Amazon and Spotify links currently available, and consequently no cover image or track list: https://awesomeprog.com/releases/83932. Once again there is that green 'finalize tracklist' link on the page, which doesn't actually allow you (or me, at least) to do anything. Hopefully that one will be on PA very soon, so it should sort itself out in due course.

I do get why you want to limit editing permissions as much as possible. You only have to look at some of the album entries on PA to understand your reasons for that lol!

If you do open up the functionality to add tracklists Mike (and understand the very valid reasons for not doing so!), happy to try and carefully do my small bit as I explore at random. Seems the sort of thing even I'd struggle to break...