Talk:ASIN

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  • -- (Same note as on CoverArtSites) Just some thoughts from IRC... Catgroove, Freso, warp, and I discussed ASINs which don't have coverart, and whether they ought to be added. Though most supported the practice, catgroove did raise a valid point which bears mentioning. The current use of the ASIN AR is overloaded. It's essentially a "can be purchased for mail order at" AR combined with a "has coverart at" AR, while also being a useful unique identifier that other sites using MusicBrainz data can use to match their data with MusicBrainz data. However, now that Amazon also does 3rd party sales, they increasingly have ASINs which don't pull up art, as the art is user-submitted, not Amazon-created. In these cases, we could link the ASIN for all the other benefits, but then either we then add a coverart AR to get the art from a different source, or we have an ugly empty box show up in the coverart area. Catgroove raised the point that we may be implying a MusicBrainz endorsement of the 3rd party Amazon seller by linking to the Amazon listing for this sort of ASIN, and thus, might be responsible if the purchaser linked from MusicBrainz to the 3rd party via Amazon is unhappy with his/her purchase. --BrianFreud [5/20/2007]
    • Surely the empty box is a presentation problem and not one inherent to amazon products without cover art. I don't know how things work behinds the scene, but assuming that amazon doesn't return a cover art URL we can simply not output the "empty box". In that case I would propose not printing the info or buy link either and to have amazon simply for id-matching purposes. --foolip 2007-09-23