Fanart & musicbrainz big fail

[ezz9]

If fanart is using musicbrainz for the listing of albums, why is musicbrainz not using fanart for their covers. Both websites have Strick quality control in getting everything right. But the album art at musicbrainz is crap. I was going to use Picard to get the tags on my mp3's but when I saw it wanted to place crappy cover art with the tags and dump all the covers from fanart that I've added to my mp3's I had to say no, not going to use it.
Having both websites not working together, is a big fail for everyone.
Time for change.

[ZincRider]

There's a plugin for Picard that will download covers from fanart. viewtopic.php?f=5&t=262

Musicbrainz have their covers hosted by archive.org, who take care about all the legal shenanigans as far as I understand. Their database is not all that compatible with fanart. They host backcovers and booklets while fanart doesn't. Fanart hosts images for release groups while Musicbrainz has images for individual releases.

While there's a lot of crap on there, they often have images other sites don't have (backcovers, booklets) in decent resolution. Sometimes they can be nice for source images - though usually not good enough. Even the better ones tend to be too small. One would need a 600dpi scan for proper descreening. Makes things so much easier.

[Kode]

They are 2 completely seperate sites, if musicbrainz have no interest in using fanart.tv as the image source there is very little we can do about that.

As ZincRider said there is a plugin for picard that uses fanart.tv

[ezz9]

A plug-in Oh! That may help. I'll have to give it a try. I still think it would be beneficial for both web sites to work together.

[Kode]

I've approached them before, they are a much bigger site, with a lot more volunteers, they couldn't care less about fanart.tv, they wouldn't even list us as a useful external link.

[outsidecontext]

I just stumbled across this thread and want to add a few things. I am the author of the fanart.tv plugin for Picard. Please note that these are just my opinions and I do not and can not speak for MusicBrainz.

I've approached them before, they are a much bigger site, with a lot more volunteers, they couldn't care less about fanart.tv, they wouldn't even list us as a useful external link.

I don't think this is the reason. Actually I have seen quite a few people from the MB community who like and enjoy fanart.tv work. But there is a big difference in what fanart.tv and the MusicBrainz own Cover Art Archive provide: Fanart.t.v is a lot about visual aesthetics, MusicBrainz more on correctness.

So on MusicBrainz you might see cover art declined if it does not have the correct aspect ratio, stickers missing, wrong coloring etc., but not so much if the cropping is not quite perfect. The focus is often on archiving and having the images to see details about a release. The cover art on MusicBrainz must also match the exact release version, see e.g. the difference between http://musicbrainz.org/release/69a8ca83 ... 0e216748c9 and http://musicbrainz.org/release/ee1fdc9b ... 7073f1621f

Fanart.tv on the other hand focuses on a great looking, cleanly edited image. Cover art I have seen here is usually rectangular and without stickers. That is also the reason why it was a good decision that cover art on Fanart.tv is not linked to the specific release on MusicBrainz but rather the release group (e.g. the album Metallica as a concept, not the specific version with the barcode 075596111324).

I completely agree that fanart.t.v is in many cases preferable if you want to have nice visuals for your digital audio, hence the Picard plugin. But while both websites have "strict quality control", as the original poster noted, the criteria by which this quality is defined is quite different. Fanart.tv is often not a good source for adding cover art to MusicBrainz. At least you will have a hard time proofing that the image really matches exactly the CD you have in hand

There was this nice discussion covering some of these aspects: https://community.metabrainz.org/t/when ... art/6389/3

As for the external links MusicBrainz is very picky about that. In theory there are quite some sites that use MBIDs, and MB could just link to them. But in general the MB community likes to have control over what is linked, and automatic linking is seen quite controversial. I remember this was discussed when the BBC started using MBIDs and the idea came up to add automatic links. Currently there are even some MusicBrainz side projects that are not linked directly. What could work is manual linking via relationships, and I think that would be a good thing to have. If I find the time I will bring this up and try to get a fanart.tv relationship added.

[discocandy]

I agree with Outsidecontext here While being absoltly great on quality control the focus is different on both parties.
While being strict on the movie and tv serie part is understandable the audio section could be a bit more loose I guess due to the age of some ol lp sleeves. But I am not a moderator so it is just my opinion.

Do not get me wrong I agree with your quality control and keen eye of the moderators.

[ZincRider]

I agree with Outsidecontext here While being absoltly great on quality control the focus is different on both parties.
While being strict on the movie and tv serie part is understandable the audio section could be a bit more loose I guess due to the age of some ol lp sleeves.

LP sleeves often need a lot of touch ups, but they're great. It's CD covers that are the problem. They just don't have enough resolution for 1000x1000px. But getting them accepted is not an issue.

The reason why a lot of older covers in the music section don't look that good is because people use crappy source images they found on the internet. They tend to have pretty nasty moire that is hard to remove (if they bother to descreen at all). It's usually better to make new scans. They're easier to work with and the results tend to be better.

I completely agree that fanart.t.v is in many cases preferable if you want to have nice visuals for your digital audio, hence the Picard plugin. But while both websites have "strict quality control", as the original poster noted, the criteria by which this quality is defined is quite different. Fanart.tv is often not a good source for adding cover art to MusicBrainz. At least you will have a hard time proofing that the image really matches exactly the CD you have in hand

It's not a good source for adding to MusicBrainz at all. You rarely ever know what you get here (although comments might change that in the future). The whole point of MB is to be able to tell different releases apart. If you can't be sure what release the cover is based on, it just shouldn't be there. If you've got a CD in your hand, you could simply scan the cover for MB.

[discocandy]

It's not a good source for adding to MusicBrainz at all. You rarely ever know what you get here (although comments might change that in the future). The whole point of MB is to be able to tell different releases apart. If you can't be sure what release the cover is based on, it just shouldn't be there. If you've got a CD in your hand, you could simply scan the cover for MB.

?? I know exactyl what I get at discogs?? I use tagscanner as weapon of choice that shows how many artwork there is. The size of the cover.jpg (always to small). When I click the detail button it goes to the site itself where I can choose wich version i need (country, record company, songs)
copy the number that is in the url. paste it in tagscanner and I have the right version?
Sure. If you have the original sleeves it is better to scan them or might even be better to photograph them from a staight angle as scanning always mean moire effects part due to the scanning poces partly because the sleeve where printed with dithering.
Sadly my record collection was stolen years ago (all 80's disco and Electro) so I am stuck with finding them online or borrow them from friends to add them. And even they got rejected.

I recently found this http://www.albunack.net/index.jsp
Thnx to ezz9 and his great writeup about MB and will try again.
who knows I can add a little more. I would like to for sure!




But once again I am very happy with the strict quality control.

[outsidecontext]

?? I know exactyl what I get at discogs??

Yes, sharing cover art between Discogs and Fanart has exactly the same issues as sharing between MB and Fanart. But the MB release groups are great to get the correct artwork from Fanart if you prefer visual quality over the exact edition. And since MB links to Discogs master releases one would be able to utilize this for Discogs, too.