Currently, i can find one release in, at least, 15 different digital formats (various levels of compression, various containers, lossy or not, etc…) sharing the exact same metadata. I have very good reasons to think having 15 releases makes no sense at all.
And since that’s digital there’s no technical limit on the number of possible different formats, in the future more will appear for sure.
It is more or less the same thing with CDs and different pressings: we do not have one release per factory, for the simple reason it makes no sense.
BUT i wish those informations to be stored: for digital i think it is important to know where i can get the FLAC 192khz 24 bits, or the crappy (but small) MP3, in which online stores, etc…
For CDs i want to know where they are pressed (different matrix), even if released as ONE release.
MB has currently no good way to store such information, this is where @reosarevok is right, we need to define “how” to store these informations, there’s no question about the fact they are useful at least for certain users.
I already explained why it is a problem. I guess you don’t care, but it is all about being able to maintain the data, if we have too much data without good tools and enough people to maintain it, the database quality will decrease.
MB is all about having the quantity AND the quality.
You misunderstand me if you missed that i actually want to store information about all digital versions, but not by useless data duplication.
Currently MB doesn’t offer much choice in this field, it doesn’t mean we don’t have to imagine better ways to do it.
And my feeling, being in computer science since 40 years, is that extra duplication will cause more harm than you think on the long term.