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Improvement
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Resolution: Unresolved
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Normal
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Streaming/download links can be related to specific Recordings, and Harmony's new features allow these to be easily added when importing a new Release, so are likely to be more commonly added by editors going forward.
This is the case on both stable and beta interfaces without any plugins, but only an issue when credits are displayed below the tracklisting on a Release page. These links do not display with 'credits inline' viewing mode.
Example release: Phaeleh - Dark Sky on MusicBrainz
When credits are displayed at bottom, every streaming/download link is shown from associated Recordings. In the example, there are shown 22 links for Bandcamp and 11 each for Spotify, Deezer, Apple and Tidal, totalling 66 URLs being displayed. The possibility for this to be a higher number is feasible - through additional online stores/services, or if services have multiple URLs for a track such as Apple's internationalising of their URLs.
Subjectively, this pushes more useful information about the release much further down the page. Objectively, this creates a huge wall of links.
[MBS-13984] Reduce space used on Release pages by associated Recordings' streaming/download links
another more extreme example, with Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music and Bandcamp streaming links, as well as Bandcamp lyric pages URLs for the works. even with complete credits, the streaming links take up more than double the space on the page
https://musicbrainz.org/release/4d8917e9-d17f-42b9-9bc2-917cd4d31b5e
I think it would be useful to show these links somehow on the release page, it'd make it easier to see what recordings and works are missing URLs (of any type, not just streaming links)
perhaps option #5 is to use icons for these URLs? for most cases, it'd be clear enough (except for cases we allow but don't have special handling for, like Google Drive or MEGA download links), and it'd even work on the inline credits view
My possible ideas for this:
- Hide these links entirely from Release pages as they are in 'credits inline' mode
- Reduce the initial screen estate used with a Load more collapsible area such as used with Release Events
- Reduce the screen estate used through less-naked URLs. For example, instead of 11 Spotify links on 11 new lines, instead use Spotify: track 1, track 2...track foo on a single line with track x being the link text
- (controversial) Re-order the display on Release pages to have the Release credits section above the Medium credits section
I was tempted to say to just hide 'em, because from a end-user (and schema) point of view I think it makes more sense to see these at the recording level (and see album streaming links at the release level). But I agree with UltimateRiff that it is important for editors (as opposed to end-users) to see what relationships are there.
I don't think there's a downside to collapsing everything by default into a section:
Recording URLs: (expand)
And something like the following may even be an upgrade/make it easier to parse the information:
Recording URLs: [123] relationships across [123] recordings (expand)