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Barcodes (part 3)

Continuing with poking into the barcode field: in this post I am going to look at the releases that I think have a valid barcode. Before you read this it is good to first read part 1 and part 2.

After processing all the entries with barcode fields I have 3,313,415 potentially valid barcodes, although I am pretty sure that not all of them will be valid.

I looked at the length of the possible barcodes and got this list (after cleaning up whitespace, hyphens, etc.):
  • 13 : 1647416
  • 12 : 1513850
  • 11 : 90840
  • 10 : 30464
  • 14 : 16631
  • 15 : 2817
  • 6 : 2628
  • 8 : 1672
  • 7 : 1410
  • 5 : 1292
  • 18 : 1251
  • 9 : 957
  • 4 : 485
  • 3 : 426
  • 17 : 353
  • 16 : 339
  • 2 : 190
  • 20 : 114
  • 19 : 113
  • 1 : 71
  • 24 : 49
  • 21 : 21
  • 23 : 8
  • 25 : 8
  • 22 : 7
  • 26 : 2
  • 37 : 1
The first two values actually aren't surprising, as they correspond to EAN-13 and UPC respectively. The others need a little bit more attention: codes that are less than 5 I can safely ignore.

A barcode with size 37 is certainly intriguing, so I was expecting a bogus entry but to my surprise it is indeed on this release. The release itself seems to be an unofficial release, so the barcode itself actually is bogus, but it is on the release. That was unexpected.

The barcodes with size 26 turned out to be a data entry error and (likely) a bogus entry. The other long entries are either data entry errors, matrix/runout numbers, unknown as there are no pictures or very unclear pictures, practical jokes by bands (mostly independent releases), releases with two barcodes, stickers from a shop with their own barcodes, unofficial releases, and so on.

I looked at a handful of the barcode values that are 9 characters long and they all were wrong and missing characters. So it seems like there is definitely some low hanging fixing fruit there.

In the next post I will look at the barcodes that are (likely) valid and see which barcodes appear most often. The result might surprise you.
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