SID codes (part 2)

Another round of digging into SID codes. Before you read this it is highly advised to first read part 1 about SID codes.

In the first part I wondered how many releases have SID fields defined, but have something in there that isn't an actual SID code. For that it is important to know what a valid SID code actually means.

Valid SID codes

According to the IFPI specifications this is a valid SID code:

"The SID Code consists of the letters 'IFPI', followed by either four or five additional characters, which may be alphabetical or numerical [...]"

which seems very clear. There are a few extra restrictions: the additional characters in the mastering SID code always have to start with "L", and mould SID codes cannot use the characters "I", "O", "S" or "Q" (it is unclear from the document if this is just for mould SID codes, or also for mastering SID codes).

With that background information I (partially) adapted my scripts and ran a few tests. I cut people some slack when it came to spaces, dashes, capitalization and even using the florin currency symbol ('ƒ') instead of a regular 'f'.

Valid SID codes in Discogs

One problem with the SID codes on releases is that they are so incredibly small, that I often need to use a magnifying glass just to read them. Therefore I was not very optimistic when starting to check these codes and expected many errors, especially with the Mastering SID Code field as there is an extra restriction: there has to be a "L", which can very easily be misinterpreted as "1" or "I" if the SID code is almost unreadable.

Using the latest Discogs dump (data up till November 1 2017) I found 19227 releases with Mastering SID Code fields that are in need of a fix. This is how they are distributed over the data:

Mastering SID Code fields with wrong value

For the Mould SID Code fields I found a similar number of releases that were wrong (15623 releases):

Mould SID Code fields with wrong value, strict checks

However, when also allowing for "I", "O", "S" and "Q", it looks a bit different (9143 releases):

Mould SID Code fields with wrong value, relaxed checks

Why the distributions for Mastering SID Code fields and Mould SID Code fields don't look the same: I have no idea.

What I do know is that it will be a tough job to fix all of these releases, as very few of them have pictures where you can actually read the SID codes.

Comments

SID codes (part 1)

One thing that I only learned about after using Discogs is the so called Source Identification Code, or SID. These codes were introduced in 1994 to combat piracy and to find out on which machines a CD was made. It was introduced by Philips and adopted by IFPI, and specifications are publicly available which clearly describe the two available SID codes (mastering SID code and mould SID code). Since quite a few months Discogs has two fields available in the " Barcode and Other Identifiers " (BaOI) section: Mould SID code Mastering SID code A few questions immediately popped up in my mind: how many releases don't have a SID field defined when there should be (for example, the free text field indicates it is a SID field)? how many releases have a SID field with values that should not be in the SID field? how many release have a SID field, but a wrong year (as SID codes were only introduced in 1994) how many vinyl releases have a SID code defined (which is impossi...

SPARS codes (part 1)

Let's talk about SPARS codes used on CDs (or CD-like formats). You have most likely seen it used, but maybe don't know its name. The SPARS code is a three letter code indicating if recording, mixing and mastering were analogue or digital. For example they could look like the ones below. There is not a fixed format, so there are other variants as well. Personally I am not paying too much attention to these codes (I simply do not care), but in the classical music world if something was labeled as DDD (so everything digital) companies could ask premium prices. That makes it interesting information to mine and unlock, which is something that Discogs does not allow people to do when searching (yet!) even though it could be a helpful filter. I wanted to see if it can be used as an identifier to tell releases apart (are there similar releases where the only difference is the SPARS code?). SPARS code in Discogs Since a few months SPARS is a separate field in the Discogs ...

Using matrix numbers of CDs to verify release years (1)

One of the first steps when making CDs is to produce a "glass master". From that (using a few more steps) a "stamper" is created which is then used to press the actual CDs. When looking at a CD you can often see text in a ring in the middle of the CD. This is the so called matrix which comes from the glass master. Apart from the matrix other text (like the IFPI mastering SID code) could possibly also come from the glass master. A bit of background information can be found on page 7 of the IFPI SID code implementation guide although I would also highly recommend watching some of the clips about glass masters on YouTube, which are highly informative. One company making a lot of these glass masters is Cinram . For most of their glass masters they stored the production date in matrix. This is good news, because it means that it could possibly be used to verify releases and see if the declared year of the release is right: it could never have been released before...

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