Advice on a Blade Runner release group merge

[mll]

Hi everyone, I decided to corral an unofficial, fan-made release into the Blade Runner OST corral.

Now, subgeek submitted an interesting point of view for not merging the release groups.

So your advice is welcome on https://musicbrainz.org/edit/46996213

Thanks !

[boa13]

The friction between movie fans and music fans when it comes to the Blade Runner soundtrack never ceases to amaze me. I see that 11 other bootlegs have already been added to the Blade Runner release group, so why not one more?

A case can be made, though, that all the bootlegs should be in a separate release group.

As far as I know, they are all extracted from the movie soundtrack, so they are all related to that “recording”. However, the Vangelis album itself is a significant rework of the material used in the movie, with extensions and variations (and omissions!), in order to make it a music album rather than a compilation of sound cues. This is the root cause of the friction, and the reason why the bootlegs have been created in opposition to the Vangelis album.

The bootlegs are not of the album, but of the movie. And the bootleggers themselves emphasize how much the album is not a proper soundtrack of the movie.

For that reason, I consider the album, its reissues, its unauthorized copies (if they exist) to be a separate release group from the movie sound track bootlegs.

[Freso]

Comment on the edit:

@Freso

Would someone who has a copy of «Esper ‘Retirement’ Edition: 25th Anniversary Culmination» consider that they have a copy of officially released «Blade Runner soundtrack»? My feeling is no, they are two separate releases, even if they are generally centered around the same material.

Maybe what boa13 says would be a better way to approach it: move all the bootlegs from the Vangelis RG to the VA RG instead of merging the two. (But I’m also biased towards not merging in general. :))

[aax]

I couldn’t agree more with @boa13. I’ve just spent ten minutes trying to find Blade Runner: Esper Edition and Los Angeles, November 2019 under release groups because it wouldn’t occur to me in a million years they’re listed under the Vangelis’s soundtrack album.

So if a noob’s opinion has any weight, I’d vote for either separate release groups for each bootleg or even a “Blade Runner Bootlegs” group for all of them. Pretty much any solution makes more sense than the current one.