Consolidating label

While submitting a release I came across a label “Rock in Music” which seemingly has 2 entries. One is described as “holding”, the other as “imprint” of that holding and written in Chinese symbols. Without researching this any further, this will invite users to add releases arbitrarily to any of those entries.

A holding only describes a relationship according to company law while the imprint is the brand where releases should be added, as far as I understand. In disambiguation we can often find hints like “Please don’t add releases here”. IMHO it would be better not to classify legal entities without releases as label at all to avoid confusion and unneccesary clean-ups.

Opinions?

1 Like

Addendum: On their facebook page at http://www.rockinmusic.net/album_detail.php?id=38 I find no evidence that label and holding are separate entities. Their website http://www.rockinmusic.net/ also has Rock in Music Ltd. written in big letters. I vote for merging the two entries into the Ltd.

What’s the actual logo on the releases? Usually I’d expect to merge into the imprint, since that’s (by definition of what an imprint means) supposed to be what’s printed :slight_smile:

1 Like

I would rather agree with you except that those legal entities may be used for phonographic copyright, copyright, parent, distributor, marketed by, etc. relationships.

Now it’s getting complicated… a logo(type) is usually a picture trademark in a legal sense. That means the trademark / brand may even be named differently than the legal entity. In our case, the entity Rock in Music Ltd. uses the logos / brands Rock In 系列 and 800x600album_detail_04 . Those are, however, not legal entities as explained. If Musicbrainz really wants to include trademark signs then the best way would be to provide a means to upload and show the logo / trademark and not a written alternative.

2 Likes

Yes, and that’s what we usually follow. The same legal entity can have multiple imprints. For example, the classical company Hyperion Records has at least two labels/imprints, Hyperion (the main imprint) and Helios (for cheaper -I think!- later reissues). Releases under Hyperion should be entered as Hyperion, Helios as Helios, even though the company behind it (and the one that gets used in copyright relationships and whatnot) is Hyperion Records Ltd, London.

3 Likes

Text of the imprint label can be close enough to logo so that we recognise it, visual hint can be set in the label comment or annotation.
Then you can link an image of the logo as relationship.

2 Likes

Ok. I guess what threw me off is that the terms “label” and “imprint” are both used by Musicbrainz even though they probably mean the same thing. A “holding” in my understanding is not the company that owns a label or imprint but a company that owns other companies.

In this sense,

  • a label can be a company
  • an imprint is never a company but a trade name
  • a label can be an imprint
  • an imprint can be a label

Are you still with me? :slight_smile: