Digital releases

[Jim_DeLaHunt]

I’m comfortable saying that absolutely digital releases are a reality of the recorded music world, that MusicBrainz should deal with them, and that right now MusicBrainz handles them inadequately. However, I think making MusicBrainz handle them well is not a question of desire, it’s a question of successfully doing difficult design and implementation work while still keeping the existing MusicBrainz running.

This subject has been talked about before:

• Clarifying "Release" in a streaming world (March 2016, bumped Feb 2017)
• Single tracks digital pre-releases from forthcoming albums (March–April 2016)

What do I mean by digital releases? The biggest gap for MusicBrainz are released recordings that are a) not a corollary of a release on a physical medium, and b) streamed, rather than fixed as static data, and c) single recordings rather than a group of related “tracks” that are part of an “album”.

What are some concrete examples? I’ll lift my examples from 2016:

@Jim_DeLaHunt

Here are a couple of examples of streaming-first releases, and streaming-based music careers:

1. Pomplamoose has been releasing “videosongs” on Youtube since 2008. Hail Mary - Pomplamoose VideoSong seems to have been their first release to exceed 1 million views. It is likely similar to Recording ‘‘Hail Mary’’, which is part of a Release ‘‘VideoSongs’’ dated March 2009, and an album Pomplamoose VideoSongs sold on iTunes since March 2009. Importantly, the YouTube release came first, generated interest, then came more YouTube releases, then an album of the YouTube releases.

2. PostModern Jukebox, a series of music videos created by Scott Bradlee and a constellation of regular and guest musicians, featuring modern pop tunes in older stylings. Bradlee released a number of solo music videos in 2011 and earlier. The first video I can find which has the PMJ style is A Motown Tribute to Nickelback, uploaded to YouTube on 11. November 2011. This work later appeared on an album A Motown Tribute To Nickelback on Bandcamp on 12 December 2012, not yet with the PMJ name. A better early example is Thrift Shop (Vintage “Grandpa Style” Macklemore Cover), uploaded to Youtube on 11 Feb 2013, later apparently released as track 2 of Release Introducing Postmodern Jukebox, dated 23. April 2013.

Both Pomplamoose and PostModern Jukebox have dozens of videos released first on Youtube, then later assembled into CDs. After the video releases became popular, they started touring, selling merchandise, etc.…

So, are the these digital-not-physical releases in scope for MusicBrainz? OP is easier on the project than I am:

@thwaller

I totally understand if MB has no interest in this.

I totally do not understand. The MusicBrainz front page says,

MusicBrainz aims to be:

1. The ultimate source of music information by allowing anyone to contribute and releasing the data under open licenses.
2. The universal lingua franca for music by providing a reliable and unambiguous form of music identification, enabling both people and machines to have meaningful conversations about music.

There is no escape clause there for, “we only care about music information that fits in nicely with the physical albums-and-CDs conventions of the mid-late 20th century”. To achieve its mission, MusicBrainz must find a way to handle digital releases.

Furthermore, commercial music distribution is moving away from physical media, and towards non-physical, streamed, and incremental releases. If MusicBrainz is to remain relevant, I believe MusicBrainz has to follow this change.

@thwaller

if one of the auto-editors or admins could provide an official opinion, or preferably an official answer, that would be great. Even if it is only a statement of intended direction.

I agree, a statement of intended direction would be good to have. Is this a suitable agenda item for the #MetaBrainz meeting? Or can @Rob or @Freso perhaps give a pronouncement?

Turning to what makes digital releases different,

@justcheckingitout

To me, a digital release is simply a copy of a physical release.… I mean, think about it - I bought the physical disc and then they give me a code for the streaming copy or I rip the data to make it digital myself. How is it a different release? Or, in reverse, I bought the digital copies and burned them to disc - my car stereo still sees it as the physical disc.

OK, those are two scenarios. But Pomplamoose and Post Modern Jukebox above do not fit these scenarios. The music recordings were distributed first by streaming, unrelated to any physical disc, in single-song units.

And there are more differences.

@IvanDobsky

that release on iTunes will be different for everyone as there are tags in there specific to the user who purchased it.

Yes! The economics and technology limitations of physical LP and CD product distribution meant that a release had many mostly-identical copies. But distribution by streaming is different: no “copy” remains as static data under normal use, so there is no comparing. And distribution by static music file still allows the distributor to put a customer ID in the file, meaning every copy of the music file could be different.

If you stand back and squint, the MusicBrainz “Release” entity is heavily tied to the physical LP and CD conceptual model. Handling digital releases properly will require a different structure, perhaps a new entity parallel to “Release”. I expect that that design and implementation will be tricky. However, “Artist” and “Recording” and “Work” entities are just as effective for digital releases as for they are for the physical LP and CD concept. So we don’t have to rebuild all of MusicBrainz.