How To Make Relationships
Getting Started with Advanced Relationships
Let's say that I'd like to add the information that Grinspoon's album Easy was produced by Jonathan Burnside. Here are the steps:
Login
If you aren't already logged in, login to MusicBrainz (see LoggingIn).
Find the first element
Browse to the first thing you want to relate. It doesn't matter which one you choose first. In this case, I'm choosing the album, Easy.
Select the first element
To do this, click on the "Use this album in a relationship" link in the box just under the title box. That's the one circled in red in the following diagram:
Once you've done that, the relationship box will change to show you all the things you've selected. So far you've only got one, which isn't enough to make a relationship, so the box will tell you this:
Find the second element
Browse to the second thing you want to relate. You can take your time doing this - MusicBrainz won't "forget" about the element you've already selected[1]. You can even create a whole new database entry from scratch if you need to. In this case, I've created a new artist, Jonathan Burnside, because he hasn't been entered in the database yet.
Select the second element
Once you've found the second element, click on the "Use this artist in a relationship" link. Now the relationship box will show both the elements you've selected so far, and since there are two, the "Create relationship" link appears.
The relationship creator page
Click on the "Create relationship" link. This will take you to a page where you have to choose which kind of relationship you want to use. This page will be different depending on whether you have JavaScript enabled in your browser. If you do, the page will look like this:
JavaScript allows the page to hide unnecessary detail depending on which values you choose. If you have JavaScript disabled, the page will look rather more complicated:
The rest of my screenshots are going to assume that JavaScript is enabled. However, the instructions are the same with or without JavaScript.
Choose the relationship type
Select the correct relationship type from the drop-down box at the top. In my case I choose "{additionally} produced", in the "production" category. The words in braces ("{" and "}") are optional attributes. When I select "produced" from the drop-down list, a new checkbox, "additional", will appear on the page.
This allows me to include the relationship attribute AdditionalRelationshipAttribute in my relationship. I'm not going to, since Jonathan Burnside was the only producer on this album. There are also start and end date fields. These are useful for relationships such as band memberships (MemberOfBandRelationshipType) and marriages (MarriedRelationshipType), but in this case they're not useful.
So that relationship is ready to submit. I type a moderation note into the box saying where I got the information from, and then click on the "Submit" button.
Finished
The moderation has now been submitted, and other users can now vote on it. In the meantime, MusicBrainz generously assumes that the moderation is OK, and displays it on the album page for Easy:
This will now be visible to all users, until the edit gets voted down or the relationship is deleted by another edit.
See Also
- AdvancedRelationshipsDocumentation - more documentation
- AdvancedRelationshipType - list of all the types you can select
- ↑ IIRC the elements you selected are stored on the server-side and are related to your session-ID. therfore the server will remember your selection for the whole session. You can always clear the list by selecting [Cancel].