Amazon

Amazon is an online store for books, CDs, DVDs and many other things. It can be a good source for CDs to add to MusicBrainz if you know what you are doing.

MusicBrainz uses AmazonMatching to find releases in Amazon stores and display cover artwork together with links to Amazon. Where this does not give the correct album or does not find the album at all you can add an AdvancedRelationship of the AmazonRelationshipType.

Hints for using Amazon as a source

You have to be carefull when using Amazon as a source for releases. In general you can say:

• Providing front cover scans you can use it for album titles in most cases (but sometimes the titles as written on the side of the CD are better so also check cover sites).
• The track listings can contain mistakes. Normally you should use other sites to double check but mostly they can give a good hint at what is correct if you have multiple differing sources. Especially if you don't know if a last track is a data track: mostly those are not linked to sound samples while the other tracks are.
• The label info is mostly trustworthy (though sometimes shortened) and can be copied to ReleaseAnnotations (as described in ReleaseAnnotationStyle for example). The format used in Amazon normally is "Label: <label> (<distributor>)".
• Below that you find the ASIN code which is the release number in Amazon's catalogue system (across the different country stores!). Those are the values that AmazonMatching stores in the database. You can also copy that to ReleaseAnnotations as it identifies a release so later this does not have to be done again. If you want to find releases with ASINs simply copy them into the search field in Amazon.
• Release dates on Amazon are somewhat tricky. They sometimes can be dates of repressings or when Amazon started putting the release in its catalogue but mostly this is the actual release date. Though it is better to double check with other sites. And be carefull: releases marked as IMPORT contain import dates which are much later than the real release dates! Try to find out where the release is from and go to the local amazon site if it exists. Check this list of all existing local Amazon sites. Also note: Amazon.de for example writes the name of the release country in the "Label" field if the release is marked as IMPORT.
• And a hint for finding Japanese editions of albums: amazon.co.jp normally only has the imports in latin script, the Japanese editions are written in Katakana/whatever. So if you want to find that, look for the releases in for example amazon.com or amazon.de, pick those which say Japanese import, copy their ASIN and enter that in the search field on amazon.co.jp - this will lead you to the original Japanese releases, which is especially helpful for the AmazonRelationshipType.