The iTunes Hatto thing
Kirk McElhearn
iTunes querying the Gracenote CDDB and returning info for a disc that,
it turns out, was a mixture of several discs. The Gramophone article
says:
"Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a
Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into
his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His
computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a
Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one
on BIS Records, by the pianist Lászlo Simon."
Can someone who has a copy of this disc confirm the above? I know a
fair amount about how the CDDB works, and this seems, to me, to be
quite impossible. (Because the CDDB doesn't query by track, but rather
by the exact number of frames and offsets on an entire disc.)
I'm not seeing commies under my bed, but it seems that this may be an
excuse for having found out some other way that Hattogate was
occuring...
Andrew, do you have a copy of the disc in question? Anyone else?
Kirk
--
Read my blog, Kirkville
http://www.mcelhearn.com
Andrew Rose
I don't - but Jed Distler, who reported this aspect of the story, does.
The only explanation can surely be that someone had uploaded the true
'false' information in the hope someone might pick up on it and investigate.
Given the response prior to this to those suggesting there might be
something fishy going on, both here and elsewhere, this approach, if
indeed this is what did happen, proved to be a success where others had
failed.
Well done to whoever uploaded the details...
--
Andrew Rose - Pristine Classical
The online home of Classical Music: www.pristineclassical.com
Kirk McElhearn
The thing is, if you search the Gracenote site, it doesn't turn up as a
Bis album, but rather a Concert Artists album:
<http://www.gracenote.com/music/album.html/genclassical/865115b0574fa1ba9388bfa349a9038e.html>
It's
the only hit for Laszlo Simon, in fact...
Andrew Rose
Thus a very clever way of tipping someone off that all was not what it
seemed, surely?
Kirk McElhearn
> Thus a very clever way of tipping someone off that all was not what it
> seemed, surely?
Perhaps. But only one? Kind of strange in my opinion. What if the
reviewer who raved about Hatto and eventually "discovered" this might
have discovered it not entirely accidentally as a way of covering up
his previous raves after finding out about the scam? This is just
speculation, but I can't find any other Concert Artists CDs on
Gracenote, and the only Hatto is the compilation CD:
http://www.gracenote.com/music/album.html/genclassical/7676dfdc64af2c3fd1598eb85fb94830.html
with
no label name...
It's all increasingly suspicious. The fact that accidentally that one
CD shows up via Gracenote as being by someone else, and is discovered
by one of the journalists who was such a clarion for the cause, is just
as suspect as the rest of the story...
Gerard
>
> It's all increasingly suspicious. The fact that accidentally that one
> CD shows up via Gracenote as being by someone else, and is discovered
> by one of the journalists who was such a clarion for the cause, is
> just as suspect as the rest of the story...
>
I don't know if this is suspicious.
Isn't everybody enabled to change the information in that database?
Kirk McElhearn
No. You can submit info via iTunes or other programs, but it's not
always accepted, especially if it's not complete.
Andrej Kluge
Gerard schrieb:
The suspicious (or cunning?) part is that the data must have been entered
into Gracenotes DB by someone who _knew_ that the Hatto disk actually
contained L. Simon's recordings. It wasn't simply someone who owns the
original Simon CD and has entered the data of his CD, since this is a CD
with another disk ID (not identically to the Hatton one).
Ciao
A.
Steve de Mena
> I've posted about this before, but I'm increasingly skeptical about
> iTunes querying the Gracenote CDDB and returning info for a disc that,
> it turns out, was a mixture of several discs. The Gramophone article says:
>
> "Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a
> Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into
> his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His
> computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a
> Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one on
> BIS Records, by the pianist Lászlo Simon."
>
> Can someone who has a copy of this disc confirm the above? I know a fair
> amount about how the CDDB works, and this seems, to me, to be quite
> impossible. (Because the CDDB doesn't query by track, but rather by the
> exact number of frames and offsets on an entire disc.)
I can confirm it Kirk. I have the Joyce Hatto CD.
I just put it in iTunes again and added a
Comment field entry that it was falsely attributed
to Joyce Hatto and re-submitted it to Gracenote.
Obviously someone submitted the information. One
can type in any performer name when one submits an
entry.
Steve
Steve de Mena
Can you even enter in the "Label" field with iTunes?
Steve
Steve de Mena
> On 2007-02-17 14:51:16 +0100, Andrew Rose <and...@pristineaudio.com> said:
>
>> Thus a very clever way of tipping someone off that all was not what it
>> seemed, surely?
>
> Perhaps. But only one? Kind of strange in my opinion. What if the
> reviewer who raved about Hatto and eventually "discovered" this might
> have discovered it not entirely accidentally as a way of covering up his
> previous raves after finding out about the scam? This is just
> speculation, but I can't find any other Concert Artists CDs on
> Gracenote, and the only Hatto is the compilation CD:
>
> http://www.gracenote.com/music/album.html/genclassical/7676dfdc64af2c3fd1598eb85fb94830.html
Here is another Hatto CD on Gracenote:
http://www.gracenote.com/music/album.html/genclassical/af2f1f7ac0fa2d0b98400806c9118cae.html
Hatto, Joyce / Chopin Études - Opus 10, Opus 25
Year: 2003
Steve
Steve de Mena
I can't believe there is much editing done, they
must get thousands of submissions daily.
Steve
Kirk McElhearn
>
> Here is another Hatto CD on Gracenote:
> http://www.gracenote.com/music/album.html/genclassical/af2f1f7ac0fa2d0b98400806c9118cae.html
Hatto,
>
> Joyce / Chopin Études - Opus 10, Opus 25
> Year: 2003
Indeed. They have two listings: Joyce Hatto and Hatto, Joyce.
No label listed for this one either...
Kirk McElhearn
> Can you even enter in the "Label" field with iTunes?
No. Which is why any recording with label info is suspicious; it means
it was entered by data given to Gracenote from the label itself.
Kirk McElhearn
> I can confirm it Kirk. I have the Joyce Hatto CD. I just put it in
> iTunes again and added a Comment field entry that it was falsely
> attributed to Joyce Hatto and re-submitted it to Gracenote.
So you are seeing it as the same info that you saw on the Gracenote
page for the link I provided?
That confirms, then, that someone in the know got that info on
Gracenote. And, as you asked in another post, since you can't upload
label info, that had to come from a source other than a user.
Steve de Mena
> On 2007-02-17 16:18:02 +0100, Steve de Mena <ste...@stevedemena.com> said:
>
>> Can you even enter in the "Label" field with iTunes?
>
> No. Which is why any recording with label info is suspicious; it means
> it was entered by data given to Gracenote from the label itself.
>
> Kirk
No other explanations? What about other Gracenote
clients besides iTunes?
Steve
Steve de Mena
> On 2007-02-17 16:16:13 +0100, Steve de Mena <ste...@stevedemena.com> said:
>
>> I can confirm it Kirk. I have the Joyce Hatto CD. I just put it in
>> iTunes again and added a Comment field entry that it was falsely
>> attributed to Joyce Hatto and re-submitted it to Gracenote.
>
> So you are seeing it as the same info that you saw on the Gracenote page
> for the link I provided?
Yes, including track names exactly the same in
terms of spelling and case sensitivity. Only
difference is the Label field is not exposed in
iTunes.
Steve
Matthew Silverstein
> Can someone who has a copy of this disc confirm the above? I know a
> fair amount about how the CDDB works, and this seems, to me, to be
> quite impossible.
It's not impossible. I've received "false positives" from iTunes before.
Matty
Kirk McElhearn
>
>> Can someone who has a copy of this disc confirm the above? I know a
>> fair amount about how the CDDB works, and this seems, to me, to be
>> quite impossible.
>
> It's not impossible. I've received "false positives" from iTunes before.
I've not seen any, and this with having ripped well over a thousand CDs...
Kirk McElhearn
Which means the Gramophone article is incorrect. It says the journalist
saw that it was a Bis CD; he didn't. He saw it had a different
performer, after which he looked it up and found that said performer
recorded the album for Bis. But since the Gracenote record clearly
shows Concert Artists, what Gramophone describes is wrong.
Andrew, if you're following this you might want to point it out to
them. It's not a major difference, but it is an error.
Kirk McElhearn
>>> Can you even enter in the "Label" field with iTunes?
>>
>> No. Which is why any recording with label info is suspicious; it means
>> it was entered by data given to Gracenote from the label itself.
>
> No other explanations? What about other Gracenote clients besides iTunes?
I'm pretty confident that you can't upload that field to the DB (along
with tons of other fields they may or may not use).
Does anyone know of a client that can do this?
Steve de Mena
> On 2007-02-17 17:39:09 +0100, Matthew Silverstein <msil...@yahoo.com>
> said:
>
>>
>>> Can someone who has a copy of this disc confirm the above? I know a
>>> fair amount about how the CDDB works, and this seems, to me, to be
>>> quite impossible.
>>
>> It's not impossible. I've received "false positives" from iTunes before.
>
> I've not seen any, and this with having ripped well over a thousand CDs...
>
> Kirk
I got one last week. I purchased the DG CD of
Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic doing
Symphonie Fantastique plus 2 shorter works from
Damnation of Faust. It identified it as the
Teldec CD of Symphonie Fantastique by Zubin Mehta
and the London Philharmonic (plus 2 Overtures).
I had another one a few weeks ago, I forget what
it was but it had few tracks and thus was more
prone to error.
Steve
Kirk McElhearn
>>>> Can someone who has a copy of this disc confirm the above? I know a
>>>> fair amount about how the CDDB works, and this seems, to me, to be
>>>> quite impossible.
>>>
>>> It's not impossible. I've received "false positives" from iTunes before.
>>
>> I've not seen any, and this with having ripped well over a thousand CDs...
>
> I got one last week. I purchased the DG CD of Karajan and the Berlin
> Philharmonic doing Symphonie Fantastique plus 2 shorter works from
> Damnation of Faust. It identified it as the Teldec CD of Symphonie
> Fantastique by Zubin Mehta and the London Philharmonic (plus 2
> Overtures).
Interesting... It's really never happened to me.
>
> I had another one a few weeks ago, I forget what it was but it had few
> tracks and thus was more prone to error.
Yes, fewer tracks to lead to possible errors, but I've had discs with
just one track that have no errors as well.
Brendan R. Wehrung
I like to think she was done in by a bot.
Brendan