History:Data Track Style
Style for Data Tracks
Enter "[data track]" as the title (name) for DataTracks.
If a DataTrack appears on a VariousArtists album, also enter "[data track]" as the artist.
Note, however, that if the data track comes last on the CD and isn't visible in an audio CD player, the track should not be entered into MusicBrainz.
- This is an OfficialStyleGuideline.
Example
- need an example
Rationale
MusicBrainz is about music, not CD-ROM indexing. If a track is not an audio track, we don't care what it contains; we only want to note that it is not an audio track. The use of a standardized title for all non-audio tracks reflects this approach.
Some audio CDs (such as CD-Extra or other formats) contain extra DataTracks (they are also used for CopyProtectedCDs). In order for them not to appear or be playable on audio CD players, they are typically placed in one or more separate "sessions" of a multisession CD. Older versions of the MusicBrainzTagger (and many FreeDB clients) don't handle multi-session CDs correctly, and treat the additional session TOCs as part of the last audio track (resulting in an increase of 2:30 in the track time) and then include the data tracks from the other sessions.
Note: The (2:30) is a real time disc-id offset difference. Times when compared to your own personal wav or mp3 files will vary (2:xx) (give or take a few seconds).
The SpecialPurposeArtist [data track] is used on VariousArtists albums because we don't care who created the programs on a CD-ROM; we only want to credit artists related to the music or audio on the disc.
Why not delete initial data tracks?
Because initial data tracks affect the track numbering of all following tracks. The CD+i interactive CD format uses an initial data track, and marks the first playable track as track 2. Although the first track is not playable, it is visible in an audio CD player as the unplayable track 1.
Examples of this are any GameDiscs with playable audio tracks on them, generally the track(s) are the musical score used in the game at certan times, good examples are 'Secret of Monkey Island' and the 'Age of Empires' games.
Also worth noting is that Age of Empires II and its expansion have only two tracks each, the actual game software in track 1 and the entire musical score in track 2 (it may use IndexMarks).
Discussion
Now that using the SpecialPurposeArtist [data track] on VariousArtists albums is an OfficialStyleGuideline, there is an exception that might be worth making; if a data track contains MP3 or other audio files, it might be worth having the artist for those MP3 files (or VariousArtists, if there are several artists) as the artist for the data track. @alex
Authors: TarragonAllen @alex mo
