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Posted: |
Mar 3, 2015 - 11:11 PM
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By: |
Richard-W
(Member)
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Does anyone scratch their head occasionally over the inconsistencies on this website? I appreciate the service the Soundtrack Collector database provides, but let's face facts, it's one hot mess. It needs a librarian, or at least someone as bright as those running Film Aficionado, to organize it.
Case in point: the composers for Varese Sarabande's 2012 release of CHINATOWN (VCL 0512 1129 | limited 3000 copies) are listed as "Jerry Goldsmith, Phillip Lambro (rejected score)." Actually, only Jerry Goldmsith's official score appears on the CD, and only his name appears on the CD and cover art as composer. Lambro's rejected score is on a different, separate CD. But the listing in my collection is stuck with two composers. The CD says one thing, the data entry says another. There are too many examples of such sloppy indexing in the Soundtrack Collector database.
Second case in point: JANE Record's JANE EYRE by John Williams contains supplementary samples from other Williams scores. In addition to JANE EYRE, there are samples from THOMAS & THE KING, MIDWAY, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, YES GIORGIO and SPACE CAMP. The cover art, however, as well as the CD itself credit one film, JANE EYRE. The tracklisting on the back lists the samples. The data entry includes the other film titles as sub-headings under the main title JANE EYRE which is fine and appropriate. But when viewed in my collection page, the CD is counted as six CDs and listed six times, once under the main title and five times under each supplement title. Wouldn't it make better sense if one CD were counted as only one CD and if the supplementary sample tracks were left as subheadings instead of separate soundtracks?
Third case in point: Often times, foreign films given English titles on the soundtracks are listed only by their foreign title. For example, Sony Classics's CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON (SK 89347) by Tan Dun appears on the cover art and on the CD itself, but the entry lists it under the foreign title WO HU CANG LONG. If the foreign title appeared in parenthesis after or under the English title, that would make sense. Shouldn't CD's bearing foreign titles be entered under foreign titles, and CD's bearing English titles be entered under English titles with the foreign title following it? To compound the problem, in some cases a CD will appear in your collection twice, under the foreign and English title, and be counted as two separate CD's.
The basic rules of indexing in library science would go a long way to making Soundtrack Collector simpler, easier to use, and less cumbersome for the site's administrators.
This post was made in a spirit of good will and should be taken as such.
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Posted: |
Mar 4, 2015 - 12:41 AM
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By: |
Thor
(Member)
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Second case in point: JANE Record's JANE EYRE by John Williams contains supplementary samples from other Williams scores. In addition to JANE EYRE, there are samples from THOMAS & THE KING, MIDWAY, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, YES GIORGIO and SPACE CAMP. The cover art, however, as well as the CD itself credit one film, JANE EYRE. The tracklisting on the back lists the samples. The data entry includes the other film titles as sub-headings under the main title JANE EYRE which is fine and appropriate. But when viewed in my collection page, the CD is counted as six CDs and listed six times, once under the main title and five times under each supplement title. Wouldn't it make better sense if one CD were counted as only one CD and if the supplementary sample tracks were left as subheadings instead of separate soundtracks?
FYI, this is a bootleg. That might explain its fuzzy entries and data.
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Second case in point: JANE Record's JANE EYRE by John Williams ...
FYI, this is a bootleg. That might explain its fuzzy entries and data.
Bootleg or legitimate CD, the site's programming would handle it the same way and provide a separate entry on your holdings list for every film title represented on the disc. A compilation disc can easily appear on your personal list a dozen or more times--under each film and also again under the overall title of the disc. But other compilation CDs will appear only once, so I get the feeling that this is a case-by-case decision made by the site administrator as to whether a compilation CD will be indexed only under its overall title or also under the title for each film represented. The fewer the number of films represented, and the longer the disc time devoted to each film, the more likely it is that the CD will be listed multiple times.
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"Chinatown" is correct. Lambro's score is on the same page, where it should be. The titles doesn't need two seperate pages because a user wants only one name to appear.
The real problems I am finding are spelling errors in titles, incorrect years, individual episodes of TV series listed seperately, people who did songs lumped together instead of specifying their role, missing composers, no way for a user to submit missing titles, and other miscellaneous problems.
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Posted: |
Mar 4, 2015 - 10:17 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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The site certainly has its peculiarities. But . . .
Most errors are susceptible to correction--wrong composers, titles, and years for films---wrong information for individual releases. Even films that do not appear in the database can be proposed for inclusion. Two exceptions: (1) Track Listings. Only the person who initially entered the listing can revise it. (2) Album Covers. There is no easy way to send in a correction of a cover that is wrong (e.g., to correct a mono cover for a stereo catalog number). So, unless you send an e-mail directly to the site's administrator on these things, there is little that can be done.
When displaying your holdings, the site pulls the composers' names from all those who worked on the film, even though some or all of them may not appear on your specific release. This is especially true for song score releases, where none of the score composer's music may appear at all.
Regarding the posting of submissions or corrections, the site seems to work on a "last in, first out" basis. If your change doesn't get posted to the site within a couple of weeks, chances are it's never going to appear. It will have been pushed down into the stack by new incoming changes. This is a shoestring operation, and I guess the site administrator feels that it's better to try to keep up with new releases, rather than to let them slide in favor of correcting old entries. There are some entries where covers have been submitted and years later are still not posted.
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