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

yindesu · September 9, 2019, 12:28am

Use better sources. Amazon Digital Music, for example, has two dates on digital releases, only one of which is supposed to be the release date of the digital release. Or, sometimes, the label runs social media accounts where they announce availability.
There’s no reason to blank out release dates that are reliably sourced.

If you only use iTunes and Spotify, you don’t have reliable dates. If you don’t know, then leave it blank. (If you know iTunes Music Store didn’t exist in 1979, then definitely leave it blank.)

outsidecontext · September 15, 2019, 7:30pm

My problem with that is that this is not any more accurate then using a generic thing like “worldwide”. But it does make the data look as if it would be very accurate because it lists specific countries.

MJmusicguy · September 16, 2019, 4:57pm

Ok guys so I need one of us to help organize and compile some of the best ideas we have here then we as contributors should adhere to the agreed upon standard even if management wont take notice until it becomes the accepted norm right now we are all over the map and thats why past threads on the subject have failed
@Llama_lover @jesus2099 @aerozol @outsidecontext I would personally love if we formed the main team for this effort ?

Llama_lover · September 17, 2019, 3:29pm

I’m trying to wrap my head around the importance of the country of release comparing digital [streaming] and physical. With physical, the country of release is important especially if the engineering and or pressing takes place in different countries. Sound quality can be different and the monetary value for a certain release may vary. With physical you can identify many attributes down to a variable such as who replaced the pressing operator when John Doe was on vacation and Mary Jones took his place etc… You can also sell what you hold in your hand.

Digital [streaming] from what I understand, can’t legally be resold. Yes I guess arrangements could be made to become a reseller. Yet unless it was purchased on a “stick” you can’t put it in your pocket. It only exists on your device or in a cloud. How can you definitively identify (discern) one from another? I guess you must just take the computers word of 0’s and 1’s that everything you read and cannot hold is the truth.

Now, is the legal seller such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify considered the label, manufacturer, or just a retailer? In the case of Amazon for example, do they [in house] convert a release to an entity they can resell as a stream? [Once they have paid for the rights.] If they don’t do their own conversion, do they get it from the current copyright holder? If that is so, do the other “stores” buy from the same copyright holder? If that is true, does that mean all the digital stores are selling the same thing? Not counting the exactitude of the lengths.

It would seem that when these retail online stores put a release out for sale, their intention would be for it to be sold worldwide and as such it would not matter if North Korea allowed it to enter its country. The stores goal would be sales worldwide through the internet. Permissions to do so are strictly hoops through which they must jump. Is it important to me to know when “The Magical Mystery Tour” was first streamed in Venezuela and by Amazon and or Spotify? That information is useless to me, however I can understand there may be someone who for some reason might want to know why.
Now, I can see the need to document in MB which online store from which country first made a particular release available. But, having to add the individual release countries makes no sense to me. It adds nothing to the worth of the release IMHO. The “sellers’ intent” would be worldwide. As far as entering it (release country) into MB I would lean toward ambiguity. No official stance, if you wish to add it, knock yourself out, just don’t criticize those who don’t.

Please don’t tongue lash me, I am sincere in trying to think this one out. Comments that would help to educate me are welcome.

elomatreb · September 17, 2019, 3:52pm

This is one area that trips up a lot of people, because there is actually no technical difference between streaming and “regular” downloading. In a streaming context, the software that is used will download the music files, play them, and then delete them again, instead of keeping them around.

Streaming might use certain codecs to keep bandwidth use to a minimum (such as low bitrate MP3 or Opus), but there is nothing stopping a conventional download to also use those (and e.g. Bandcamp offers them).

MJmusicguy · September 17, 2019, 4:00pm

Steaming music is no different then streaming on Netflix with downloads same exact principle and when choosing a digital platform I always assume the artists intent is as global as possible. aka worldwide.

yindesu · September 17, 2019, 7:33pm

The record company and/or artist decides on release availability. This includes release date, release countries, and formats (download and/or streaming).

I’ve already provided real examples showing digital releases that aren’t worldwide.

aerozol · September 17, 2019, 8:25pm

I don’t understand how this line of thought is any different from physical CD’s. Every store/publisher who produces a CD would love to be able to sell it in all countries. But licensing and publishing rights stops them from doing so. And we track these hoops they have to jump, even when the content on the disc is exactly the same.

That said, I’m not necessarily saying we need to track all country information.

I think one of the problems that has led us here is that digital releases are often being merged into one catch-all release. A Spotify ‘release(s)’ and a Bandcamp release have many large and measurable differences. If it was made clear that these should be separated, and how, you’d have an easier time suggested down rules like ‘we don’t store release date and country data for d̶i̶g̶i̶t̶a̶l̶ Spotify releases’. As it stands I would emphatically argue against any step to remove information from digital releases on a blanket scale.

Skeebadoo · September 17, 2019, 11:55pm

I’ve been adding almost exclusively digital releases to MB for years and I mostly see the reason for these catch-alls. I always have the newly added release opened in multiple e-store/source tabs, so that I can compare them. Usually there’s nothing to compare, really.

I’m fairly sure though that no one would try to argue for merging a Bandcamp release with a Junodownload one if the track lists didn’t match.

On the other hand, a Beatport “exclusive” that actually means “we released it [worldwide] two weeks earlier” and a later date Traxsource [worldwide], Junodownload (mostly) [worldwide] and iTunes [long list of dynamically changing countries] - I’d wager all these fit under one release entity in MB database.

As for clashes with marlonob’s adds, the most recent one I remember can be seen in this RG:

I made an import from Bandcamp, marlonob made one from iTunes. Mine is [worldwide], the other is [long licensing list]. Mine seemingly doesn’t have a barcode, while the other does, but quite frankly a barcode is not a common thing to be found on Bandcamp - just like you won’t find the catalog number on BC simply because there’s no input field for it, but that doesn’t mean that the particular label doesn’t use these (hence it’s useful to compare multiple sources for data).

Other than that, same recordings, same credits (artists + track titles), same cover art, same independent label. My opinion? It’s the very same release, only displayed at different e-booths on different e-market-squares But as long as my addition is correct, I’m happy and I don’t essentially want to question marlonob’s methods.

chaban · September 18, 2019, 12:56am

There is one difference, the distributor. On iTunes, Spotify and others it’s “The Orchard” while Bandcamp distributes on their own site only.

MJmusicguy · September 18, 2019, 1:37pm

Ok from here on out please post a numbered list of important point you want included in a new digital standards proposal I wanna start organizing and writing a true proposal for digital releases

Skeebadoo · September 18, 2019, 1:41pm

Fair enough. But where can I even find this kind of info? I’ve checked page sources for the iTunes/Deezer/Tidal/Spotify listings and it’s not there.

chaban · September 18, 2019, 1:50pm

Company prefix belongs to The Orchard
I think it’s safe to assume they are the distributor since that’s their specialty.

aerozol · September 19, 2019, 7:34am

I think a Bandcamp release that you can download in FLAC and a lossy Spotify stream have more difference in terms of content (and what an end user might be browsing for) than most CD’s that just have a slight logo shift on a reprint.

I’m not saying that every digital release should be entered separately, but if people are adding country data then it has value (because they are interested in it), and to be able to add nuanced storefront-specific data then it necessitates those releases being split.

I guess the point is that even if it is just a different storefront, if MB wants to capture information that is unique to that storefront (e.g. countries), I think that’s fine. MB has the capacity.

chaban · September 27, 2019, 4:05pm

According to Spotify API (via Tatsumo tool) this release is not licensed for Germany amongst other. But I can stream it just fine with my German IP address.

Faulty API, outdated IP 2 country database? Who knows.

BTW, the cover art for that release was changed some time after release.

Countries excluded (Spotify)

Western Europe: Austria (at) Belgium (be) France (fr) Germany (de) Liechtenstein (li) Luxembourg (lu) Monaco (mc) Netherlands (nl) Switzerland (ch)
Northern Europe: Denmark (dk) Estonia (ee) Finland (fi) Iceland (is) Ireland (ie) Latvia (lv) Lithuania (lt) Norway (no) Sweden (se) United Kingdom (gb)
Southern Europe: Andorra (ad) Cyprus (cy) Greece (gr) Italy (it) Malta (mt) Portugal (pt) Spain (es)
Eastern Europe: Bulgaria (bg) Czech Republic (cz) Hungary (hu) Poland (pl) Romania (ro) Slovakia (sk)
Western Asia: Turkey (tr)

Cached Spotify API response by a‐tisket

{
  "album_type" : "single",
  "artists" : [ {
    "external_urls" : {
      "spotify" : "https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF"
    },
    "href" : "https://api.spotify.com/v1/artists/5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF",
    "id" : "5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF",
    "name" : "Triplo Max",
    "type" : "artist",
    "uri" : "spotify:artist:5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF"
  } ],
  "available_markets" : [ "AE", "AR", "AU", "BH", "BO", "BR", "CA", "CL", "CO", "CR", "DO", "DZ", "EC", "EG", "GT", "HK", "HN", "ID", "IL", "IN", "JO", "JP", "KW", "LB", "MA", "MX", "MY", "NI", "NZ", "OM", "PA", "PE", "PH", "PS", "PY", "QA", "SA", "SG", "SV", "TH", "TN", "TW", "US", "UY", "VN", "ZA" ],
  "copyrights" : [ {
    "text" : "2019 Ultra Records, LLC",
    "type" : "C"
  }, {
    "text" : "2019 Ultra Records, LLC",
    "type" : "P"
  } ],
  "external_ids" : {
    "upc" : "0617465002731"
  },
  "external_urls" : {
    "spotify" : "https://open.spotify.com/album/13HMpsY3PVzkyi6LMDhArI"
  },
  "genres" : [ ],
  "href" : "https://api.spotify.com/v1/albums/13HMpsY3PVzkyi6LMDhArI",
  "id" : "13HMpsY3PVzkyi6LMDhArI",
  "images" : [ {
    "height" : 640,
    "url" : "https://i.scdn.co/image/2737699d7d7fc8e46a299fbae16b8072c7967670",
    "width" : 640
  }, {
    "height" : 300,
    "url" : "https://i.scdn.co/image/f8c4588c5afbdbd86506fda6819a744ec62d2722",
    "width" : 300
  }, {
    "height" : 64,
    "url" : "https://i.scdn.co/image/70b47c5d58f9532656b13bb0bb502701c94735e6",
    "width" : 64
  } ],
  "label" : "Ultra Records",
  "name" : "Shadow",
  "popularity" : 36,
  "release_date" : "2019-03-29",
  "release_date_precision" : "day",
  "total_tracks" : 1,
  "tracks" : {
    "href" : "https://api.spotify.com/v1/albums/13HMpsY3PVzkyi6LMDhArI/tracks?offset=0&limit=50",
    "items" : [ {
      "artists" : [ {
        "external_urls" : {
          "spotify" : "https://open.spotify.com/artist/5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF"
        },
        "href" : "https://api.spotify.com/v1/artists/5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF",
        "id" : "5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF",
        "name" : "Triplo Max",
        "type" : "artist",
        "uri" : "spotify:artist:5vie0556qntEu1EgA7ijtF"
      } ],
      "available_markets" : [ "AE", "AR", "AU", "BH", "BO", "BR", "CA", "CL", "CO", "CR", "DO", "DZ", "EC", "EG", "GT", "HK", "HN", "ID", "IL", "IN", "JO", "JP", "KW", "LB", "MA", "MX", "MY", "NI", "NZ", "OM", "PA", "PE", "PH", "PS", "PY", "QA", "SA", "SG", "SV", "TH", "TN", "TW", "US", "UY", "VN", "ZA" ],
      "disc_number" : 1,
      "duration_ms" : 176842,
      "explicit" : false,
      "external_urls" : {
        "spotify" : "https://open.spotify.com/track/4xAxDT9WjA9JXNna6eebuw"
      },
      "href" : "https://api.spotify.com/v1/tracks/4xAxDT9WjA9JXNna6eebuw",
      "id" : "4xAxDT9WjA9JXNna6eebuw",
      "is_local" : false,
      "name" : "Shadow",
      "preview_url" : "https://p.scdn.co/mp3-preview/8a37bac7a8ac5cb01425d1863389791631e95125?cid=75b6df03f0b64373a03ce241fe0c5c6b",
      "track_number" : 1,
      "type" : "track",
      "uri" : "spotify:track:4xAxDT9WjA9JXNna6eebuw"
    } ],
    "limit" : 50,
    "next" : null,
    "offset" : 0,
    "previous" : null,
    "total" : 1
  },
  "type" : "album",
  "uri" : "spotify:album:13HMpsY3PVzkyi6LMDhArI"
}

yindesu · September 27, 2019, 6:48pm

Are you sure you aren’t streaming Shadow - Single by Triplo Max | Spotify in place of Shadow - Single by Triplo Max | Spotify ?

chaban · September 27, 2019, 6:53pm

I can stream both fine but only Shadow - Single by Triplo Max | Spotify is visible to me on artist page. Which unsurprisingly is licensed to Germany.

yindesu · September 27, 2019, 7:06pm

Well, https://open.spotify.com/album/5hBbYosL96xrrmAVSxr5v6 is the “available to zero markets” version of https://open.spotify.com/album/415m7ofwksKlV6Ke8WPJdc . The track in this album shares the same ISRC TCADY1802862 which is presumably how Spotify determines if you can stream a track from an album that isn’t actually available to you.

As you probably noticed, the sound copyright information differs from https://open.spotify.com/album/13HMpsY3PVzkyi6LMDhArI even though it’s the same recording.

Anyway, my point is that I haven’t experienced the Spotify API returning incorrect available markets, and Spotify does some fancy redirection for end users, so the answer to your question is that the API isn’t faulty and it’s not a stale data problem.

Jeluang · September 27, 2019, 11:39pm

I can attest to yindesu as I’ve had two similar Spotify releases where the licensed countries are different but actually contain the same track(s) with the same ISRC. The tracks can be played on either album page but only one is visible from the artist’s page.

MJmusicguy · October 1, 2019, 2:41pm

I think the community needs to get out of its own
for a perfect example of what i think should be done this keeps the data its easily editable its all there but does not break the interface

bless you @chaban I do not see any drawbacks to this method and since we as yet have no really set a standard without going in circles this should be it