My ticket proposing to deprecate Europe as a release country (MBS-6939)?
Well, because Europe seems useful in a way (not for me but for many), and I (now) don’t mind seeing Europe next to the countries I manually confirm.
Some releases explicitly say “Europe” (probably referring to the European Union). In time there might be a similar release region for for instance NAFTA.
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Sorry for being pedantic but, to my experience, I have not read « Released in Europe / E.U. » as this stuff is not printed, generally.
I do see « Made in the E.U. » very often and set it with the appropriate AR… Indeed I have to set it as Europe instead of E.U., I whished I would have AC on areas too. 
I’ve made an AREQ ticket for adding “EU” as an Area:
https://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/AREQ-940
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Since Europa is a bit of a special case (impossible to define for one), shouldn’t it be more like a “special purpose release country”? Worldwide is between square brackets, shouldn’t Europe be too? Both Europe and Worldwide are approximates, just like a release probably won’t be released in North Korea, a release might never be released in Moldova or Vatican City. But sometimes you just don’t have any more precise information and Europe would be a better fit than nothing.
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The current Europe could be added square brackets.
A problem is that the current Europe has been used for both [Europe] (the vaguely defined stuff) and for manufactured in the E.U. kind of relationships.
I may be one of the few editors to have set the latter and it would be easy to fix my releases and even probably others.
I would be Ok for @Freso new E.U. and for renaming current Europe to [Europe].
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Indeed. “Be aware that there is an EU directive that says “Made in EU” must be
put on CDs in some cases even if it is released in only one country.” ← quote from Places issued RYM guideline
Regarding this, RYM, Discogs and MusicBrainz have different criteria, say, when it comes to release country or issuing countries. MBz is the more “relaxed” of them all, on the other extreme, RYM is very “pedantic”: I’ve noticed that once they see Performing rights societies (or copyright collection societies Wikipedia they immediately associate that release to PRS country, which isn’t entirely correct.
Overall, the guideline is quite well written, and also notice the 4 conditions a release must satisfy to be issued as a European release. 
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Well I was just thinking about the Manufactured relationship, for which it is quite simple for me.
I usually don’t set Europe in Release Events.
Made in the E.U. printed → Manufactured in Europe MB release‐area relationship (I will then move those to the upcoming European Union area if any).
MB has Europe (Area), but no European Union (not to be confused with Eu ( ~ City, in Seine-Maritime, France)). Be that as it may, but Europe, having no flag of its own, carries now instead the flag of the EU. That is definitely wrong, and the flag should go away until MB has EU to properly pin it to.
The star circle flag is the flag for Europe in the most general sense. In fact, it was used by the Council of Europe long before it was (also) adopted for the European Union. (Technically: For the European Communities, because the European Union didn’t exist under that name yet.)
You can read all details on Wikipedia, Flag of Europe.
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I should just tape myself to confinement somwhere. Need not read details after your pointer, have even written an own paper long ago, on EU’s appropriation of the flag.
Thanks & salutations.
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It will become a bit confusing when we have both the EU and [Europe] with the same flag though…
I have the habit to set a release country (without deleting existing countries or Europe) each time I can first hand physically confirm a release country, like when each I’m buying my CD legit in some France shop, for example.
When everything is exactly the same, CD matrix and manufacturer included.
But recently I had to write this in the annotation (so that info is not completely lost), as it was not accepted in the release countries.
I find that counter-intuitive and am seeking for more opinions.
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I would say that clearly is a case of adding a country of France with its own date. I do this with the UK, and know of other editors who do this with Germany and other countries too. I’ve seen plenty of good arguments towards this as it is clearer and more accurate data.
The continent of “Europe” is too vague and wide. Having separate countries and dates listed is far more informative (especially as release dates can often differ). We don’t want to get to the sad state that Discogs is at where some editors actively hunt for countries like “UK” and replace them with “Europe”.
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the main edit in question: https://musicbrainz.org/edit/99898535
I also second that adding more specific release countries is reasonable. I don’t know that I’d do it myself, but I’m not gonna stop anyone from doing so
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Unless the label is based in France I would not add it to the release field. We get a lot of overseas releases in NZ stores but I wouldn’t add NZ.
I think for it to be useful that field has to track the primary source of distribution/where the label or artist (if self released) is primarily based, rather than where you can buy the release.
But I would also apply EU cautiously, usually for bigger labels that really do have multiple offices or releases obviously aimed at the entire EU.
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This is also part of the problem. The EU is less that half of Europe. It is what leads to some of these confusions. Europe is literally the only continent listed in the country list.
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It’s not an import, the label(s) did market it in France in French by buying advertisement spaces in rock magazines, etc.
But, if I remember correctly, there was only an English language hype sticker.
On CD I see GEMA (Germany) and MCPS (UK).
And Parlophone (UK) and ISO Records on packaging.
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In my view, it’s redundant to have both European countries and Europe as a release country. Either you have a complete list of countries it’s being marketed in or you use Europe as a way of showing that it’s not specific to one European country.
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Europe is just a vague information:
- It does not say in which European countries it is sold and in which European countries it isn’t sold
- We don’t even know the list of countries MB Europe covers
- We can realise later that there were in fact several distinct pressings throughout European countries
So when I can first-hand confirm something more tangible like this specific pressing (CD matrix) with this disc ID in this packaging, etc. was released in France at this specific date, so where am I supposed to track that well defined fact?
Just forget it, because we no longer care for factual release dates and areas?
So it’s agreed like that, in majority?
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