Songs on the track list of a band do not match up with those found in search, help!

I looked up the track list for Custom’s CD “Fast”. Then I looked up a few of the songs on kazaa (so sue me… oh wait, I mean “don’t sue me”) and I can’t find half the songs, but that’s not the weirdest part. There are other songs (and I’m not talking about somebody who put a song in the wrong folder, I mean hundreds of users) that are listed as being on the “Fast” album which I can’t even find being on any of their records (well there’s only one record so it’s not that hard to come to that concluson). I’ve never seen anything like this, anyone have any ideas?

Well, I do know that this is not uncommon with certain artists if they release different versions of an album in different countries. Sarah Brightman, for instance, it notorious for adding extra songs, or different hidden tracks, on her albums, depending on where you are. It’s annoying, because one does not want to buy the American version, plus the Japanese and European versions just to get a track that’s unavailable on the others. Looking up the CDs on Amazon, CDNow, or Barnes and Noble would not reveal the existence of these other versions, since they generally sell the non-import version. Check eBay (or Amazon zShops) for import CDs to see if that’s what’s going on here.

Song information is frequently wrong on these file sharing services. It doesn’t mean much that hundreds of users have it listed that way – it only takes one person entering the info wrong (by mistake or intentionally).

… and then that song gets shared around by everybody else. So you have the same wrong, labeled wrong EVERYWHERE. If you need a song and its listed incorrectly and you keep downloading the same wrong song over and over again. It almost makes you want to go out and buy the damn thing.
dead0man

But why are half the songs that are officially on the CD not found on the music sharing site? EVERYONE sharing the wrong files? Those are some pretty slim chances…

You’d be surprised. In the mid-90s, Scottish singer Edwyn Collins had his one big international hit: “A Girl Like You”. Perhaps you’ve heard it. But you may have thought it was a Bowie song…virtually everyone on a famous, now-defunct file sharing service did! When I was looking for the song over a year ago, I came up with hundreds of listings for it and I don’t think any gave the correct artist information. If it wasn’t listed as being a David Bowie song, it was listed as being an Iggy Pop song (really!). A few people had it as being off the Empire Records soundtrack, which is true enough, but it seemed that no one gave poor Mr. Collins his proper credit.

Judging from this, and other similar experiences I had with file sharing services, I’d say that the chances are in fact huge that all of these people are sharing files listed with incorrect information.

… and as a more recent example, peruse your favorite service for blink182 materials, and you’ll certainly find “Seasons in the Sun” - which was most certainly done by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, on one of their (seemingly) hundreds of cover albums.

No one I know has it correct, and it’s all over the place.

But 6 tracks of a CD simply not being listed anywhere? Not under another artist, not listed at all.
I later found a few of them at audiogalaxy, but this still makes me wonder.