"Original date" is something different for albums and tracks!

[Moonbase59]

This is mainly a reminder to talk about:

Without actually doing much testing: You are aware that the "original date" for an album and a track are two completely different things?

Just because I ran across library.py today and I think there was something flakey regarding the original year/month/day …

The original date for an album should be the earliest date this complete album has been released. (Note: Production and Copyright year can be different, some albums are first released long after!)

The original date for a track should be the earliest date this single track has been released (even as a single or on a completely different album). Using MusicBrainz (or Picard with track/work relations enabled), this is usually derived from the release date of the oldest recording found. (And should not be confused with the recording, production, remastering or remixing dates.)

Example (fictional):

A "Greatest Hits" compilation came out in 2010 and has been re-released in 2018. The tracks on this compilation stem from years between 1969 and 2008.

• Album Date for 1st release: 2010-03-23
• Album Date for 2nd release: 2018-09-23
• Album Original Date for both releases: 2010-03-23
• Track 1 Original Date (for both releases): 1969-03 (we don’t know the day)
• Track 2 Original Date (for both releases): 1972 (again, we only know the year)
• Track 3 Original Date (for both releases): 1998-04-01 (we know the exact date)
• …

Doing this right would also automagically get rid of any problems people have with (often manually tagged) large Various Artists compilations with many tracks from different years.

Purely selfish, I know. Just because I want to

beet ls original_date:1959-07   # look for TRACKS first released in July, 1959

and get all tracks that have been released in my birth month, be it on a compilation or not … 😄

Or maybe find all albums I own that have been released in 1959:

beet ls -a original_date:1959   # look for ALBUMS first released in 1959

[sampsyo]

Please see #1498, where this has been discussed before. There's even a community-contributed plugin to get track release dates linked there!