I'm a huge fan of navidrome, and thus spent some time reading its source code, and discussing with Deluan about its data model, making this list of weird edge-cases as we went.
- Weird album names:
- Albums without a title, like Rammstein's latest album, Led Zeppelin's fourth album, KoЯn's eighth album, …
- Some albums have multiple covers:
- Some albums have confusing or problematic covers:
- Confusing album names:
- Some tracks don't have a title or have a confusing name:
- Some tracks are long:
- Some tracks are short:
- Nine in Nails's Broken has 99 tracks, with tracks 7 to 97 consist of 4 seconds of silence each.
- Speaking of size, some albums' name are long as well:
- Tracks can have multiple artists, like GRAY (그레이) (Feat. Various Artists) - 119 REMIX which has, of course, 119 different ones.
- Some bands are kinda changing their name:
- GZR, also known as
g//z/ron their first album,geezeron their second, andGZRon their third. - Ghost was known as Ghost B.C. for some times, but only in the USA.
- Suede, known as "The London Suede" in the USA.
- Zoviet France, also known as ":$OVIET:FRANCE:", "Soviet France", ":Zoviet-France:" and latterly usually written as ":zoviet*france:".
- Invent, Animate changed their name to "Invent, Animate" to avoid being confused for 2 distinct artists. Their latest EP, The Sun Sleeps, As If It Never Was, consists of 3 tracks: "The Sun Sleeps, "," and "As If It Never Was".
- GZR, also known as
- Some artists have several names:
- Aphex Twin, also known as Blue Calx (not to be confused with the other Blue Calx), Caustic Window, Brian Tregaskin, The Dice Man, Soit - P.P, Smojphace, Rutchkfard Games, Phonic Boy On Dope, Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Q-Chastic, Ricardo Jamiro, Richard D. James, Karen Tregaskin, GAK, The Tuss, user48736353001, and Bradley Strider.
- Filipe Santos
- Some bands have confusing names:
- Some tracks have confusing names, on purpose, like every single one on Drumkoon's They Tried To Ban This album.
- Some albums are known under several names:
- Most albums have several versions/releases:
- The Eminem Show with its 15 versions
- All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling by Efrim Menuck, under the name God Speed You Black Emperor! released on cassette in 1994 on cassette with 27 tracks, re-released in 2022 with 4 tracks, and the bootleg version with 31 tracks. Oh, and also the band changed their name from "Godspeed You Black Emperor!" to "Godspeed You! Black Emperor" in 2002.
- Sybreed's Japanese edition of Antares has 12 tracks, with the 11th being "Technocracy", while the USA version also has 12 tracks, but the 11th is "Plasmaterial". The Russian edition only has 11 tracks like the Swiss promo one, but the European promo version only has 8.
- The Art of Noise released 4 UK versions of their Close-Up single with the same catalogue number and the same sleeve, but with different tracks, including a version that didn't even contain the track "Close-Up".
- Taylor Swift's remastered her albums to regain complete ownership of her music.
- Licensing issues are annoying:
- Different bands may have the same name.
- Take "Emperor" for example. It could be:
- The Norwegian black metal band Emperor,
- The Drum'n'bass producer Emperor,
- The Trance artist Emperor,
- The Japanese Metal band Emperor, originally named Rommel, not to be confused with Rommel from Japan.
- The virtual penguin hip-hop artist in the world of Arknights Emperor,
- The Emperor, an hip-hop artist,
- The Emperors, but the 60s rock band,
- The Emperors, but the 60s blues band,
- The Emperors, but the 90s rock band,
- Havamal could refer to the Viking metal band or to, well, the other Viking metal band.
- Or Bulldog Breed. It could be the one from the UK who released an album called Made in England, or the one from the UK who released an album called Made in England.
- Avishai Cohen, the Jazz musician from Israel, and Avishai Cohen, the Jazz musician from Israel.
- Common "cool" names like Revolver, Peace, Hybrid, End, …
- Take "Emperor" for example. It could be:
- Internationalisation is hard, like for Пётр Ильич Чайковский (Tchaikovsky) and his 31 different names on MusicBrainz.
- Some artists will benchmark your utf8 support and annoy your operating system:
- My favourite: a band named brouillard, with a single member called brouillard, whose every single album is named brouillard, and of course, so is every single track.
Take a look at MusicBrainz' database schema to have a glimpse on how to tame this madness.