Why are MusicBrainz Track (Recording) IDs saved as `UFID` in MP3s while all other MusicBrainz IDs are saved as `TXXX`?

[quantenzitrone]

It has been like that since the beginning of MusicBrainz ID support https://github.com/beetbox/beets/commit/ac98777adc7279b7bd216d22077d8e84d2b35f54

ping @sampsyo as the original commit author on that

I stumbled over this while trying another musicbrainz/beets related tool https://github.com/Serene-Arc/listenbrainz-playlist-uploader/issues/5

[quantenzitrone]

Furthermore, I think it shouldn't be named mb_trackid, as this is very confusing since the field saves the Recording ID. MusicBrainz docs call the mb_releasetrackids just tracks: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_Identifier

[jackwilsdon]

If I had to take a guess, it's UFID as that's what Picard uses:

https://github.com/metabrainz/picard/blob/e17ecfbad066a7019a675a8b201467ed8bbbbe6a/picard/formats/id3.py#L505-L506

https://github.com/metabrainz/picard/blob/e17ecfbad066a7019a675a8b201467ed8bbbbe6a/picard/formats/id3.py#L366-L367

And this reply seems to explain why it's named mb_trackid: https://github.com/beetbox/beets/issues/2690#issuecomment-329913930 (it sounds like MB used to call it "track id")

[quantenzitrone]

ok that makes a lot of sense

[Serene-Arc]

Seems strange that the URL it produces is malformed though, I'll need to take a look.

[quantenzitrone]

its not meant to be an url i think

[wisp3rwind]

Closing this: There doesn't seems to be anything to do here, and the original question appears to be answered.