It’s a good opportunity to put more eyes on making the artist country available in the release.
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I’ve always taken “[Worldwide]” to mean “Internet” myself, which would also include many livestreamed concerts and the like. I don’t really see the point of adding a new release country when we’ve already got (IMHO) a perfectly acceptable one already.
that said, if we added a way to exclude countries from [Worldwide], that could be a possible way to fix some of the issues brought up in this thread.
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I think the point of this proposal is specifically that it’s quick to implement and bypasses the controversies of “Worldwide not actually meaning every single point on Earth”.
I am strongly in favor of this, even if all it accomplishes is finally ending this debate through the application of authority.
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I’m not necessarily against it, I think it would be significantly easier to just say “Worldwide not actually meaning every single point on Earth” and leave it at that. we also wouldn’t have to edit all the existing releases which are already marked as [Worldwide] too.
that said, I think there is a case for adding more distribution regions as areas, that way we can more easily mark a release as Worldwide except Oceania without overloading a release with 180+ release events. then we can do the same with less than 10 release events. I mean, we’ve already got [Europe]…
possibly related is @aerozol’s proposal from above
edit: I forget who posted a screenshot of a digital distribution websites region selector (probably not searching in the right places), but those would probably be good regions to include.
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Woo!! +11
Not being able to find real Fiji releases is a very valuable issue for this mess that basically just shows where some shops are selling media on the day a release was added to the database.
Distribution patterns should be added to Spotify\iTunes\Deezer pages. History should be recorded on those pages as to when countries like India started add to streaming, and when Russia\Belarus was excluded.
There are some complexities like how Pink Floyd splits distribution around the planet, but that data is better shown on a single label page, not every single release. (@tigerman325 has plenty of experience here)
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I don’t think it matters if we use [worldwide] or [digital], these are the important steps either way:
- Have a-tisket default to [worldwide]/[digital] (!)
- Have some guidelines that specify when to use what
I think don’t think the problem is that we don’t have enough areas…
Both of those could have been done ages ago without this faffing about.
My main concern with adding a new area:
I’m worried this will be another membranophone situation, a small change which has wider reaching consequences than we may expect.
Thousands of editor hours spent going through the DB swapping all digital releases from [worldwide]? Yet another historical MB mess to clean up/that will never be done… ugh.
If we’re doing a bandaid fix (don’t get me wrong, I know dev time is limited, it’s better than nothing) can we try not to add complexity for a change.
It will be the hard calls that have to be made by @reosarevok/the style lead that are the main factor anyway. When is a digital release not [digital], if ever. When is anything non-digital [worldwide], if ever. etc
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This could potentially be solved by a bot, one that goes through all current [XW] releases and checks if they have Spotify/Deezer/Apple (etc.) sources. If we want to be fancy it could do check the APIs of the services to see if they exclude too many countries to recognize things like Japan-only releases.
A bot came to mind too, but all to stop people using long country lists? Let’s just try a guideline that guides everyone not to.
The nuance of which will be the same issue no matter what we call the area - [worldwide/digital]?
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Still see no problem with country lists personally. Rather that. Those are released there according to the distribution. It’s good to spot patterns. Now I’d prefer more options to shorten them, like other continents besides Europe. Usually that’s how the labels are distributing them. Like have North America, Africa, Asia, etc as options. Also, wish we could have Worldwide, except China or Worldwide, except United States for those instances when only a handful of countries are exempted.
I think it’s the most sensible solution other than removing it completely for digital release (might be tricky to code), a dummy country for digital release might be better.
While we’re on the subject, what do we do with theses ?
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Well, the problems are mentioned on my post: they actually are making the site work significantly worse, and there aren’t any great ways to avoid that either that we have seen in the team 
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But if a distributor says it was released in Fiji than it was. I agree about the dates. That’s why I suggested several times to use a date only once on a blank country or new “digital release” would work for this and then just list the rest of the countries without dates. However, we could shorten the lists by having continents available or Worldwide less certain countries, etc. But if we have to because of time outs, I understand. I agree that maybe “digital release” is better than a long lists when there is only 1 label that has it worldwide though. However, there are some bands (i.e. Pink Floyd) that have 2 major distributors and I believe that information of country distribution is important. If there was an “except option”, then lists of 52 countries (Europe) & 180 countries (outside of Europe) could be 1) Europe & 2) Worldwide, except Europe.
3 Likes
TL;DR: Let’s use the “worldwide minus X,Y,Z” format. Actually, let’s make streaming a separate thing completely. Default behavior is what matters. Some editors are aiming too high.
So I finally took the time to read through this entire thread, and scroll through a few others. And I would like to give my opinion, even though I am only a beginner here on MB. Absolute wall of text coming.
I arrived here wondering about these giant lists of countries, which to me felt like noise generated by a script. Turns out, it is indeed a script, and my opinion is shared by a significant fraction of editors. I wanted to find arguments in favor of keeping these before deleting anything, and found some here, so thank you all for the discussion so far!
But I still believe these lists are too much. Again, I only joined recently, so it’s not about the interface being broken/ugly anymore. I genuinely believe the current way of saving this data hurts the database more than it feeds it, for several reasons.
We have established that the list of dates and countries a-tisket provides only mirrors the date of query, and does not represent the actual release events. It only tells you where you can listen to it now; not to mention the modified, retroactive dates.
In a perfect world, this data would be corrected, checked before submission, and corrected again by peers, making it accurate and worth keeping. But we are not in a perfect world. I don’t expect anybody to manually correct all 200+ events when adding a release. And I expect such releases will be checked and corrected once submitted even less.
a-tisket is a great tool, and I want to thank @marlonob for releasing it. But as with any tool, we are left trusting the person using it. Thanks to this tool, the energy barrier for submitting releases to MB is significantly lowered. But this in turn invites editors less concerned with data quality, and a bulk of releases hardly checked.
Yes, nobody should take a-tisket’s output as gospel, and we should always double check everything. But while I admire the high standards some people in this thread set to themselves, I will not trust any user to do the same.
Which is why, whatever the final consensus is, I strongly recommend an update of a-tisket’s default behavior. Lazy editors will remain lazy; perfectionists will remain perfectionists. It’s the middle ground, and bulk of our userbase, we have to accommodate for.
Making submissions easier to invite additions, while maintaining high standards for the final result, is a very delicate balance, but one we must strive for. I am confident “quick and dirty” submissions were not @marlonob’s goal when they developed the tool for themselves; but if it can be used for that, then we have to assume it will be. Which is why I believe the script’s default behaviour is the most important.
Now, back to the countries lists.
I hear the arguments in favor of, and against, using “worldwide” or a different flavor of it for digital releases. But the point that the database needs to be user-friendly is valid. We need to invite collaboration if we want our submissions to be checked and the data to be improved. For this, things need to look concise. I don’t believe anybody wants to scroll through 200+ countries for every version of every album, when submitting to or browsing MB.
As many already suggested, I believe this issue could be addressed by subtracting countries, instead of adding them. We could mark any digital release by default as “web”/“streaming”/something, and add countries that are excluded. This could, of course, be reversed for small-scale online releases, such as e.g. the DACH regions mentioned previously. But a special location, that is known to be a “dirty worldwide”, would keep things visually simple, make it known that some detail may have been lost, and allow other editors to see and therefore verify it more easily.
Whatever system we decide on, there will always be exceptions and imperfections. Which is why I insist on keeping the default behaviour adapted to the most common situation. In the case of online music, the common occurrence is “almost worldwide”, which is why the “negative” version (assuming worldwide and adding non-releases) is the only one I can get behind right now.
But you know what?
I don’t even like streaming, on MB or anywhere. And it might be relevant to this whole can of worms.
Thinking about this whole issue, I was first seeing things as a consumer trying to access the music. Where can I buy a CD? Where can I listen to Spotify? This was challenged by people comparing streaming to a delivery rather than a release, or a mix of the two. But the differences are larger.
”Digital release" has been used pretty vaguely AFAICT. I believe we should split it, and make the difference between music streamed and music available through download. In the latter case, I can own a copy of the music, just like when I buy a CD at the store. My hard drive may break just like the CD may get scratched, but until then, I am free to listen to the music any way I want, wherever I am. In the case of streaming, my enjoyment of the music will always be conditional to the platform, their geo restrictions, and their contracts with the labels. Nobody will come to my house to take my CDs, but my favourite album might be deplatformed from Spotify tomorrow.
Now, I agree that music not being available to stream anymore does not warrant its removal from MB. I am going further, and claiming it wasn’t even released by the streaming platform to begin with. Streamings can and should be registered into MB, but in a way different than releases. Was a 90s tube “released” when I could hear it on the radio, or when I could buy the cassette tape?
Maybe we can’t reach a decision about date & place of “release” because it’s the wrong way to think about streaming.
I’m happy to start a new thread if people want to discuss this point somewhere else.
Finally, and stepping back a little bit, I would like to quickly express a concern. Some people here seem to wish for a level of detail that I personally find excruciating. Listing every country and island on Earth and implementing hour of release per country seems ridiculous to me, when in contrast some albums don’t even have a known artist.
Of course, my beliefs are not reason enough to discard data; neither is the fact that this data is lost/never existed for older releases. But it is not worth raising our expectations for new releases and editors, either. I would rather see longer descriptions including such footnote-level details, than force everyone to deal with forms cluttered with such fields, fields which in most cases will at best remain empty and at worst contain wrong information. Again, we have to keep in mind the average submission from the average user. I don’t believe this data will be known most of the time.
Which is why I humbly suggest that we lower our standards on such issues, and focus our energy on other pursuits requiring editors’ attention. Not to mention such a level of detail might scare off newcomers.
Please, do not bite more than you can chew. There is such a thing as too much information.
Anyway, just my few cents in way too many words.
Thanks again to everyone contributing to this conversation, and to MusicBrainz in general.
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I think debating the legitimacy of streaming releases goes way beyond the scope of this topic, and you run the risk of creating a neat definition that may suit your personal needs but alienates a large fraction of the potential userbase (because like it or not, streaming is how most people get their music today).
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Sorry if my previous reply came off as aggressive towards streaming haha. I completely agree that it is the main way to listen to music nowadays, and kicking it out of MB would make zero sense. I’m only suggesting a different format than “Digital media” for steaming services, for which different rules regarding release date and location could apply, instead of the giant lists of countries originating from a-tisket. But yes, this does deserve a new topic if the idea seems reasonable at all
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I actually hate…yes, HATE how their are a huge list of countries. It looks messy, these releases update my music with a country that isn’t the US when I update my music through Jaikoz. IMHO this topic has become so blown out of proportion. Is this music available mostly worldwide…then worldwide is what should be shown. If you are looking at “release events”, I believe this is the wrong place to be putting that information–you should create a separate field(s) for that data. People that are that interested and want to be that specific can spend their time populating that new area of data.
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After having a few days to think about this, “digitally” released would be a great compromise. I have no issue with this, and it seems most people responding like it. I hate having all the countries in the annotation, but that’s only because it’s duplication from the release events. Now it’d be necessary if we want to preserve distribution data. We can add/re-add them from a-tisket and add them to the annotation.
I know I’m probably the only one, but I’ve added release events from countries that were from the distribution lists on Jaxsta and not just a-tisket. If this release event is added, it’d be cool if there was someway to autogenerate the annotation from the existing release event lists. Adding those countries took a long time. Yes, despite what some have said in this thread, there are some of us who took the time to add 100s of countries manually. To me anyone who engaged in calling releases without countries Worldwide after a long list was already on this engaged in destructive edits. So, this compromise would benefit everyone.
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I personally believe that music released digitally on the Internet should be marked as [worldwide] because typically the intent (by the artist) is to achieve the widest distibution. Further, I think that much of the “problem” with the long countries lists on the release are because people are trying to capture “availability” location rather than “release” location (whereas “release” location is more appropriate to a physical medium).
Perhaps a long-term solution would be to add a new (sort of) relationship to capture “availability” locations (countries) with start and end dates for digital releases. This would also allow capturing the availability history (e.g. originally available in country ‘x’ but later blocked or originally blocked but later unblocked), without having to constantly try to update the countries list (either in release countries list or annotation).
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While that might be true on self-released Bandcamp or Soundcloud releases, major streaming releases on iTunes, etc. usually have labels and typically more than one. There are many digital releases that are only available in certain areas due to label restrictions. So, Worldwide is not accurate at all unless it really is Worldwide. It’s annoying that just because it’s on iTunes people automatically put Worldwide and it turns out it was a US only release. Very common. Also, very common for it to be Worldwide, except US and the US release have a completely different label. So, it makes sense to see a release not include the US and then have one that is US only. This is accurate. Worldwide on a release that has different labels in different areas is just wrong. Also, I find it informative for when releases aren’t available in a bunch of countries because they are explicit releases. They aren’t Worldwide. So, having a digital option for date and listing the countries in the annotation is a better solution, than just saying everything is Worldwide if it’s on the internet.
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