Enter "[data]" as the title (name) for data tracks.

If a data track appears on a Various Artists album, also enter "[data]" as the artist.

Note, however, that if the data track comes last on the CD and isn't visible in an audio CD player, the track should not be entered into MusicBrainz.

Examples

• Final Fantasy VIII (disc 3) is an example of a game disc with a single audio track by one artist.
• Magic & Mayhem is an example of a game disc with multiple audio tracks by the same artist.
• Descent II: Macintosh is an example of a game disc with audio tracks by Various Artists.
• Revolution Magazine: Horizons is an example of a Various Artists CD+i audio disc with an initial interactive data track.
• Źródło is an example of a CD+i audio disc by a single artist.
• Schrei is an example of an audio disc with a "trailing data track" that contains a music video (you can't see the extra track any more, as it was removed by the Remove Track Edit #3832243.
• The Fog of War is an example of an audio disc with a track (#20) entitled "Data" that is not a Data Track; rather it is a normal musical track.

Rationale

MusicBrainz is about music, not CD-ROM indexing. If a track is not an audio track, we don't care what it contains; we only want to note that it is not an audio track. The use of a standardized title for all non-audio tracks reflects this approach.

Some audio CDs (such as CD-Extra or other formats) contain extra data tracks (they are also used for copy-protected CDs). In order for them not to appear or be playable on audio CD players, they are typically placed in one or more separate "sessions" of a multisession CD. Older versions of the MusicBrainz Tagger (and many FreeDB clients) don't handle multi-session CDs correctly, and treat the additional session TOCs as part of the last audio track (resulting in an increase of 2:30 in the track time) and then include the data tracks from the other sessions.

Note: The (2:30) is a real time disc-id offset difference. Times when compared to your own personal wav or mp3 files will vary (2:xx) (give or take a few seconds).

The Special Purpose Artist "[data]" is used on Various Artists albums because we don't care who created the programs on a CD-ROM; we only want to credit artists related to the music or audio on the disc.

Why not delete initial data tracks?

Because initial data tracks affect the track numbering of all following tracks. The CD+i interactive CD format uses an initial data track, and marks the first playable track as track 2. Although the first track is not playable, it is visible in an audio CD player as the unplayable track 1.

Examples of this are any game discs with playable audio tracks on them, generally the track(s) are the musical score used in the game at certan times, good examples are 'Secret of Monkey Island' and the 'Age of Empires' games.

Also worth noting is that Age of Empires II and its expansion have only two tracks each, the actual game software in track 1 and the entire musical score in track 2 (it may use Index Marks).