If you are a fan of words going into your ears, please fasten your seatbelt. We have a number of exciting updates for podcasts, broadcasts, audiobooks and audio dramas, including new relationships and updated guidelines!
New Audio Drama relationships
Audio dramas have some unique relationships that can now be properly added into MusicBrainz’ machine-readable data schema.
Although many of these relationships were added with audio drama in mind, you may also find them useful when editing audiobooks, podcasts, and other release or work types.
- Sound effects: (Artist > Recording) This indicates an artist that did the sound effects for the recording.
- Audio director: (Artist > Recording & Artist > Release) This indicates the artist was an audio director for this release/recording…
- Scriptwriter: (Artist > Work) Indicates the person who wrote an original script for a dramatized work, such as an audio drama.
- Adapter: (Artist > Work) Indicates the person who adapted this work (generally from a different medium, such as a prose work into an audio drama or a stage musical into a film musical).
- Adaptation: (Work > Work) This links two works, where one work is an adaptation of the other (generally from a different medium, such as a prose work into an audio drama or a stage musical into a film musical).
- Broadcast: (Label > Recording) This indicates an organization (often a radio station) broadcast the given recording.
We also clarified some existing relationships that could be used for common audiobook/drama credits, where the relationship name does not make it obvious. These examples can now be found in the Audiobook guidelines:
- “Dialogue editor”: editor (spoken vocals)
- “Sound design”: engineered / engineer
- “Music”: composer
And, with some technological differences, as an adult!
Podcast and broadcast program guideline changes
The change: For podcasts we no longer prefix the release, track and recording title with YYYY-MM-DD.
Previously: 2008-04-24: Escape Pod #155, “Tideline”
Now: Escape Pod #155, “Tideline”
Click here to view the new podcast and broadcast program guidelines
Rambling explanation: The date prefix was a holdover from the days when broadcast releases were sourced from television or radio-only audio. The “release date” for those broadcast recordings usually does not correlate with the broadcast date. However, the broadcast date is most important for sorting and identification. So, like with live bootleg music releases, the broadcast date is given prominence in the title field.
A podcast is a broadcast or show that is released directly to the consumer, digitally, for download or streaming. Podcasts almost always have a source URL, a proper release date, an official title or naming scheme, and often other credits and metadata, such as cover art. This change in the guidelines brings our podcast naming conventions more in line with how they are released by the artist/label/channel, and how listeners expect them to be formatted, rather than simply inheriting the older broadcast conventions.
The naming standard has not been changed for more traditional radio or television broadcast releases, meaning that audio ripped from radio (for instance) should still be prefixed with YYYY-MM-DD.
Interested in editing Audio Dramas, Audiobooks, Podcasts or Broadcasts? Come join the discussion in the forums!
MetaBrainz Blog 
How does this effect old time radio programs?
It shouldn’t affect them – unless they were officially released/reissued as a download or stream (e.g. podcast). In that case you can add another release to the same release group, following the podcast guidelines.
The release representing the original radio show (and, presumably, a rip/recording) should stay the same as it was.