`artist_name` contains album name (and fails auto-linking) on some players

[nfraprado]

For whatever reason, it seems that the artist_name field submitted by ListenBrainz contains, in addition to the artist name, the album name concatenated after a ·. As a result of this, the auto-linking in listenbrainz fails most of the time.

Since I don't know how this field is put together, I don't know if this is entirely the player's fault or something else, but it happens on more than one popular player.

I tested on three players: VLC, Vinyl Music Player and Fossify Music Player. The issue happens on both VLC and Vinyl but not on Fossify.

Here are the data snippets from listenbrainz for the same track:

VLC (not OK):

{
  "inserted_at": 1743025481,
  "listened_at": 1743025391,
  "recording_msid": "b430d379-c549-40c7-94be-b886b8631efd",
  "track_metadata": {
    "additional_info": {
      "media_player": "VLC",
      "recording_msid": "b430d379-c549-40c7-94be-b886b8631efd",
      "submission_client": "ListenBrainz Android",
      "submission_client_version": "2.8.1"
    },
    "artist_name": "Linkin Park · Meteora",
    "track_name": "Easier to Run"
  },
  "user_name": "nfraprado"
}

Vinyl Music Player (not OK):

{
  "inserted_at": 1742077226,
  "listened_at": 1742077157,
  "recording_msid": "811155ae-879f-4feb-8cbf-1040e411ae2a",
  "track_metadata": {
    "additional_info": {
      "media_player": "Vinyl Music Player",
      "recording_msid": "811155ae-879f-4feb-8cbf-1040e411ae2a",
      "submission_client": "ListenBrainz Android",
      "submission_client_version": "2.8.1"
    },
    "artist_name": "Linkin Park  •  Meteora",
    "track_name": "Easier to Run"
  },
  "user_name": "nfraprado"
}

Fossify Music Player (OK):

{
  "inserted_at": 1743025267,
  "listened_at": 1743025150,
  "recording_msid": "5d53b797-1c80-4d04-97dc-5a86e9a6cb58",
  "track_metadata": {
    "additional_info": {
      "duration_ms": 204168,
      "media_player": "Music Player",
      "recording_msid": "5d53b797-1c80-4d04-97dc-5a86e9a6cb58",
      "submission_client": "ListenBrainz Android",
      "submission_client_version": "2.8.1"
    },
    "artist_name": "Linkin Park",
    "mbid_mapping": {
      "artist_mbids": [
        "f59c5520-5f46-4d2c-b2c4-822eabf53419"
      ],
      "artists": [
        {
          "artist_credit_name": "Linkin Park",
          "artist_mbid": "f59c5520-5f46-4d2c-b2c4-822eabf53419",
          "join_phrase": ""
        }
      ],
      "caa_id": 17357251129,
      "caa_release_mbid": "e1656e7e-c23f-48e4-894e-fe1e0d5e6707",
      "recording_mbid": "5e303870-a183-4c71-9de8-0866ce075dd5",
      "recording_name": "Easier to Run",
      "release_mbid": "e9b5c5ad-d91e-39d0-89fc-b8ac312bcc55"
    },
    "release_name": "Meteora",
    "track_name": "Easier to Run"
  },
  "user_name": "nfraprado"
}

[nfraprado]

After closer inspection, even the separator is different between VLC (·) and Vinyl (•), so it's likely the player's fault for introducing these. Still I wonder if there's anything ListenBrainz could do on its end to avoid this and support those players.

[07jasjeet]

Hi @nfraprado, thanks for reporting, we will soon introduce client side parsing for artists and titles as well.