Changes to digital releases are discussed regularly on this forum, but today I encountered a peculiar phenomenon that I’d like to get confirmed and documented on the forum. Today I found an editor updating a release I have entered into MB some time previously:
The edit consisted of adding several missing tracks to the EP that was associated with the purchase for download link. However, I was convinced that this was a single consisting of one (1) track. Following the link to the corresponding page, I found no trace of a single, but only an album by the same name. So I started to doubt myself; Did I accidentaly import a track instead of an album perhaps? Am I becoming old? Is my mind going?
Starting to question my own sanity, I investigated further. My invoice showed that I purchased my copy on March 1st 2024. This matches the release date that was set February 9th 2024. Some searching revealed that the single release still exists on Beatport. The release date for the current Bandcamp album is dated August 2nd, 2024. So that confirms that I remember correctly and that a different release has completely assimilated the single I bought, vanishing it without a trace.
So first, I’d like to know whether fellow community members have had similar experiences. Secondly, I’d like to have confirmed that the update should be entered as a separate release with a new release date, whereas the URLs of the assimilated release should be set to “ended” and perhaps a little annotation should be added to explain how the single release met its demise.
Similar experiences, yes. Tracks have been removed from a tracklist (without explicitly telling), releases have grown from a few tracks to a full album. On Bandcamp artists can modify their tracklists every day if they like.
If you go to Wayback Machine there are captures from 2024-02-23 (after the questioned single release) https://web.archive.org/web/20240223221149/https://il-lo.bandcamp.com/ and 2024-08-12 (after the album) https://web.archive.org/web/20240812004632/https://il-lo.bandcamp.com/ (can’t link because Bandcamp redirects to the newest release, and the forum auto-follows those redirects).
If you compare the current version of the fair | il:lo with the first archived version you’ll notice a “Buy the full digital album” link on the current page that wasn’t there at first. So the track existed in February 2024, while the album didn’t.
I’ve seen somewhere that Bandcamp tracks can be added to albums, so that could also be what happened here
I’m kinda curious if your original single still shows up in your Bandcamp collection, or if maybe it disappeared when it was assimilated or whatever happened
I did look for relevant posts on the forum but missed that one. Thanks.
That is an interesting question. It turns out that “the fair“ still appears in my collection, but when I click on it I end up on the album page (which I do not own). Interestingly, if I click through to the “single“ track, my avatar still appears on the “supported by“ gallery. So it appears that the original single was indeed assimilated whole into the EP. Perhaps this is because singles are already released as tracks?