For example, this cover by ROSÉ which was made available only on Soundcloud and YouTube. If I add to MB, should it be an official or a promotional release?
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Official!
Promotional has quite a specific meaning in MB. I wouldn’t take the release platform into account here.
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“A give-away release or a release intended to promote an upcoming official release” perfectly describes SoundCloud posts. They are ‘give-away’ in the sense that the music is free to listen to. SoundCloud doesn’t even require users to upload music; anyone can upload any audio file. It just so happens that music is the most popular type of audio on the website. Think of it like Instagram, but with audio instead of pictures.
Audio file uploads to SoundCloud don’t equate to a ‘release.’ They are simply posts on social media.
That’s your opinion, but not the opinion of the majority of the community in my experience. You could possibly make the argument that a SoundCloud track is not a release at all and just a standalone recording, sure; that becomes less realistic when there’s a specific cover made for the track to look like, well, a release cover. Making the argument that it is a promo release though is unlikely to be very convincing because our usage of promo is very specific, as you’ve been told, and this is not that.
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Most releases on Spotify are now available on Soundcloud as part of Soundcloud Go+. It’s a paid streaming service now as well. As far as the free stuff that is uploaded, it’s no different than YouTube. We don’t mark them as promotional either.
Soundcloud is very much as valid a platform as any other digital store. Releases there can have cover art, ISRCs and barcodes.
Since Travis Scott is the artist that’s being discussed, feel free to check the DAYS BEFORE RODEO release on there. If you check the page source, you’ll find the line “upc_or_ean”:“196871381420” along with ISRCs for every song.
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It’s not my opinion. This is just basic functionality of the website.
You can go to SoundCloud right now and post an audio file. This doesn’t automatically make it a ‘release,’ let alone an ‘official release.’
Here is example.
This is not a ‘release’; it’s just an random audio file posted on an audio-centered social media platform.
Distributing music to stores is not what makes releases official.
As an artist, I can upload something to soundcloud, or any other free media sharing site, and consider it an official release. Style / Release - MusicBrainz doesn’t make mention of releases needing to be distributed to stores to be considered official, just that they need to be officially sanctioned by the artist.
It’s an official release if you want it to be. If that’s your soundcloud account, you as an artist can sanction that soundcloud page as an offical release.
There’s also Bandcamp, anyone can create a bandcamp acocunt and post music there. Do you think bandcamp releases are not official either?
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Bandcamp (as well as SoundCloud) provides a way to buy digital audio files or to buy a subscription on SoundCloud. Both sites offer options for “a give-away release’ or a release intended to promote an upcoming official release”.
Additionally, both platforms allow users to buy digital audio files or subscriptions that grant access to official releases
You seem to be conflating “free” with “not official” - that’s not the case. All those “download for free” releases on Bandcamp are still official.
The idea of a give-away release in that guideline is very old, from when most music was in CDs, and it mostly just meant stuff like “getting a CD with your magazine or your cereal”. Basically, unless the artist specifically claims something is a promotional release, I’d rarely ever set anything digital as Promotional.
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No. The main differences between promo and official releases are:
- Promo releases are not intended to be sold, and there is no way to get access to them through official means.
- Promo releases are distributed via “give-away” standalone or as a gift with some other product.
Bandcamp gives the artist the freedom to set a price for their release, all the way down to $0
And yet, there’s a perfectly simple way to get access to this release through official means: stream it on SoundCloud 
I’m not too sure why you are so intent on arguing about this really, which is in any case a very minor thing. But if you think the definition of promotional in MB should change and you can convince a fair portion of the community about it, then feel free to open a discussion and I’ll change the definition as needed. Just to be clear, I cannot imagine any circumstance in which I’ll not veto a change that makes everything in SoundCloud non-official though (because SoundCloud is full of official music).
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And yet, there’s a perfectly simple way to get access to this release through official means: stream it on SoundCloud
Exactly as the promotional definition says.
A give-away release or a release intended to promote an upcoming official release
Okay, it seems we’re talking in circles now. To clarify:
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I’m in charge of the guidelines, and I can assure you that the way you’re reading the guideline is not in the spirit of what the guideline means and that any No votes here are correct.
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The wording of the guideline has aged poorly for an age of mostly digital music, so although most people seem to use it correctly, I would be open to any wording suggestions that clarify the situation.
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SoundCloud / YouTube / Bandcamp free streaming (and/or download) options are as official as Spotify / Deezer / Apple streaming options, as far as MusicBrainz is concerned. Music uploaded by the artist in these channels is Official unless there’s a very, very clear reason why it should not be. Music uploaded by anyone else without artist permission is probably a Bootleg release (mostly for things like fan remixes, since we don’t count straight pirate copies as legitimate releases). Almost nothing there qualifies as Promotional.
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That seems reasonable, but that implies that the basic understanding of physical promotional releases doesn’t apply to digital releases at all, and digital promotional releases basically don’t exist.
It looks like double standards for physical and digital releases
And at the same time there is no reason to not apply distinctive features of promo releases to any type of medium
Digital promotional releases definitely exist. I know @Xythium adds them regularly to the label YUKU, which has a whole community around their subscription model called YUKRU - Subscribe to YUKU | YUKU
The YUKRU Facebook group
They are promotional because they’re made available to their subscribers before being released to the public, I think usually a few months beforehand.
Noisia used to release promos through their Patreon as well.
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You left out that the other primary purpose of Promotional was to hide things from the default rendering of artist overview pages.
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There are definitely digital promotional releases. There are radio stations that add releases that are sent to them directly from the label. They sometimes even have different artwork than the official releases.
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