If they have different barcodes then IMO they qualify for different releases, no matter how store-based releases the current schema will generate.
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Agree with this as physical CDs can have different releases just due to small artwork text changes. Digital should get the same. FLACs released by the band at source are likely to be subtly different to ones released by a store later.
It is slightly confused by Picard as it can wipe out any visible differences due to the tags. That can’t happen with a CD.
So it comes down to - what is MusicBrainz an index of? Seems logical to find a way of logging any differences in some way.
It’s fairly simple. Different barcodes mean different releases. Occassionaly, and lately more common, that MFiT & others share same barcode. This is why I proposed what I did above. However, it seems the majority still think that we should keep MFiT and other releases as separate releases. I suppose others can take it further and go to different filetypes, etc, but this has been avoided. Sometimes a hi-res audio site, i.e. Qobuz & HDTracks also shares barcodes, but these are typically kept separate from non-hi-res releases.
At this point I wonder by what definition GTIN are assigned. Which differences mean a new number.
Is it just for sales tracking?
Not all labels handle it the same way it seems. Evident by the mess we see sometimes:
- Shared GTIN for CD and digital.
- Either shared or separate GTIN for streaming, download and processing (MFiT and
24bit?). - Different editons of CDs sharing same GTIN.
Are these perhaps just screw-ups or is there a system?
Then we got the case of an artist changing his distributor. Only the GTIN has changed and iTunes redirects old ID to new ID. How are we supposed to discover this, if not by chance?
What if these releases were only added after the fact. Would we ever know about that distributor change?
We would need an extensive guide on entering digital releases for new editors. We can’t expect everyone to know these often hidden details.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not for “dumbing down” things. But maybe we need a new definiton of releases in the digital domain as long as we don’t know how the industry uses them and for what purpose.
Unfortunately, it’s by chance a lot of the times. However, I try to pay attention to the new releases on iTunes and they typically tell you when they are reissuing an old release the week they are doing it. Also, I use ISRC.net as they sometimes show when the new barcode went into effect. Typically sales go up on reissues as well, so you’ll start seeing old titles pop up on Billboard charts, etc. the week that popular reissues occur. It’s definitely not exact and I wish that iTunes, etc would just give you the true release date instead of showing the original dates a lot of times, but this is what we currently have to deal with. Btw, I rarely see different barcodes for Apple Music vs. MFiT iTunes, so that’s another issue to make your head hurt, and sometimes the Apple Music release uses the same barcode as Spotify, but the MFiT release has a unique barcode. 
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GTIN is simply a 14-digit version of UPC, EAN, JAN, etc. Add two zeros at the beginning and the 12-digit UPC becomes a 14-digit GTIN. Add one zero and the 13-digit EAN/JAN becomes a 14-digit GTIN.
Any consideration that defines when a new GTIN will be assigned is the same as what decides whether a new UPC or EAN is used. That is, if they are considered different products — in many cases this will be an arbitrary decision by the company assigning them.
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