Digital releases: Merging? / Long country list? / Just [Worldwide]?

I can’t get it to install via Tampermonkey :sob:
Whenever I click the link, it just displays the raw code. There’s no install button or anything.

The problem is the file extension, it needs to be .user.js for the userscript managers to be able to detect the script, not only .js.
You can still installl it by copying the code and creating an empty new userscript with Tampermonkey to paste the code into. Admittedly that’s not as comfortable, but it works until @texke has fixed the GitHub repository (and the direct link in this forum topic).

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Thanks. I managed to get it to install that way :sweat_smile:

This needs to be placed somewhere prominent so other userscript programmers don’t make the same mistake.

Good to know, changed the filename & link above to .user.js.
Users with the .js file should get the updated version automatically.

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I just noticed a problem with the script: if I set a release’s release date as empty (value 0), the script will parse that as a “0-0-0” value for each country, which the release editor warns is invalid.

A bit late but here is a hypothesis:
What if a conflict leads to the exclusion of a country by (major) labels (and other foreign companies)?
Lots of new releases won’t be available after that date.

Speculation: Some time later old releases are retroactively made unavailable en masse.

spoiler alert
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Isn’t an easier solution to have a Shops section of the database that can better keep track of the areas that these stores supply to? Maybe a wiki page of some form that can keep track of these changes? When territories are added, when they are suspended, and so on?

Curious - does this mean if someone adds a 2005 Digital Release from Spotify today, will that still include Russia in the list as it was released in Russia in 2005? Or do we only get “today” data when adding a digital release?

I assume that releases made today will just not include Russia. Then in three years time when there is a leadership change and everyone runs back to selling stuff to Russia again there will need to be a bulk edit of all release to add a Russia 2025 date?

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Yeah, I’ve always knew this day would come. Of course, on digital releases countries shouldn’t be removed just because they are no longer there, because they were at the time. Digital releases are a mess anyway as when adding for the first time it’s a “what countries are they in today” by a-tisket, whereas many releases aren’t correct on the actual release date for each country because most of those countries didn’t even have iTunes/Spotify/Deezer on those release dates. @IvanDobsky is correct. But that’s been the issue all along with digital releases. This is why I’ve always wanted a single release date on digital and then just list the countries that have it without a date. Much like Jaxsta does. I wonder if sites like Jaxsta will remove Russia & Belarus from their distribution lists, etc. That might be one way to see, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they remove them there as well as they might change their distribution lists to reflect where there are today. I notice they remove all releases that are no longer available.

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Excuse me if this has been pointed out before. I can’t help help but notice that often the only “excluded countries” I see are islands and not just any islands. Usually it’s one or more of these in any combination:

  • South America: :falkland_islands: Falkland Islands (fk)
  • Northern Europe: :svalbard_and_jan_mayen: Svalbard and Jan Mayen (sj)
  • Eastern Africa: :british_indian_ocean_territory: British Indian Ocean Territory (io)
  • Oceania: :cocos_islands: Cocos (Keeling) Islands (cc) :christmas_island: Christmas Island (cx) :norfolk_island: Norfolk Island (nf)
  • Polynesia: :cook_islands: Cook Islands (ck) :niue: Niue (nu) :tokelau: Tokelau (tk)

Taking a closer look almost half of them are part of a bigger country (in MB context):

:british_indian_ocean_territory: British Indian Ocean Territory is apparently already ignored by editors.

That leaves us with:

Two of them (:cook_islands: Cook Islands and :niue: Niue) are in a formal association with another state, namely New Zealand, which BTW is an “included country”. The two remaining countries don’t look as independent either:

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Just for clarification: I agree with that and didn’t mean to imply to remove it retroactively (unlike some editors who instead blanket interpret the lack of all countries as status “withdrawn” which I find problematic if the reason is unknown).

My concern is rather, if the speculative scenario becomes true, that editors might blindly copy-paste the country list (whether for lack of knowledge, by mistake or even deliberately) onto either old but not yet added releases or while editing an existing release.


Edited to add:
Actually this is already a problem for new releases where Russia (and Belarus)
are no longer included.

What will happen to the releases that were originally “excluded” assuming they are retroactively included again?


That seems probable given that Jaxsta is supposed to use the same metadata exchange protocols as distributors and digital service providers. It’s unfortunate to see them remove releases.

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For the record, most of these islands were not linked to a country prior to December 2021, when I requested the links be added.

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to add to this, i’ve had two releases so far where these were the only excluded countries:

  • Central America: :costa_rica: Costa Rica (cr) :guatemala: Guatemala (gt) :honduras: Honduras (hn) :nicaragua: Nicaragua (ni) :el_salvador: El Salvador (sv) :belize: Belize (bz)
  • Polynesia: :cook_islands: Cook Islands (ck) :niue: Niue (nu) :pitcairn_islands: Pitcairn (pn)

album 1 / album 2
(italicized the ones addressed in chaban’s post)

they were both distributed through distrokid, and i have my doubts that the artists did this manually for only these releases… especially considering the first artist released this worldwide just a couple weeks ago.

are these legitimate release events? and does anyone know why this is happening / have this happen to them too?

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Looks like Russia and Belarus are retroactively removed from old releases.
If that’s what is indeed happening, good luck with data maintenance:

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Sounds like something out of Orwell’s 1984. Editing history. We have always been at war with Eurasia EastAsia Belarus\Russia.

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How are they retroactively removed? AFAICT, both are still listed in release countries.

Or do you mean from the platforms? The platforms don’t show historical data (as has been mentioned several times in this thread and related discussions), only what the status is right now (since that’s what those services need to operate), which is also what is being reflected in the annotation. When embargoes are lifted, they’ll likely be added back.

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before, when spotify announced they weren’t available in russia anymore, it was just the free plan- anyone with a premium subscription can continue to use it until the month they paid for ends. that’s why releases could still be available in russia. now, it’s been a month. it looks like all releases now say russia is excluded, it’s not that tha labels removed it, it’s that spotify is just not there anymore and atisket hasn’t been updated to reflect that.

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Hello I am posting a thought here about another reason why it seems better to simply mark DL albums as [worldwide].

Besides being not maintainable, those hundred country releases, make the release statistics odd:

I didn’t read the posts in this topic since May 2021, so, sorry if it has already been said. :bowing_man:

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What would be the cut off point? How many countries?

I’ve come across a number of digital albums that have different barcodes and labels for a NZ (and often Oceania andother adjacent areas) release, and then there’s one (or two) other digital releases that cover the rest of the globe.

This still seems like useful information.

My thinking is that the solution is to display anything over [?] amount of countries as worldwide, in stats etc as well, but still have it expandable on the actual release display. Thoughts?

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I’ve been setting as [worldwide] if no more than like, 5–10 countries are excluded. I think that’d be about 180 or 190 countries included? I forget how many countries there are according to Spotify and Co.…

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im sure someone has said this before but i think it would be really nice to be able to say “[Worldwide] (minus Russia, Curaçao, etc)” instead of long lists. i think it would help with the stats thing. though i’m sure that’s much easier said than done in terms of implementation and i’m aware of problems that it may cause (at what point does it stop being “includes x countries” and start being “excludes y countries”?)

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