To confuse things a bit, GEMA is also used heavily in the UK as the record industry had an argument with MCPS and most of the big labels swapped to GEMA in the 1990s. (I read too much of Music Week looking for release dates. Some great articles in there.)
For the UK, Music Week magazine is really useful. I will often dig into those back issues to find exact dates for when something is released and add that data. It is misleading to just have a vague mush of “Europe” to cover the release. Was it really available in Iceland on that same day? Russia?
Yes, but it’s better to be vague than be incorrectly specific. If the full list of countries is known, then it shouldn’t be used. If several European countries are known, but not a full list is known, and it has text like “Made in the E.U.” printed, then the Europe country should be used.
If the pressing is known not to only be for France, yes, then it should be forgotten, unless you have a complete list of countries that could be used in place of Europe. It’s incomplete and redundant in these cases. If there’s multiple pressings all meant for multiple European countries, use Europe for all of them unless you know the exact countries (not just one) that pressing was released in. If the pressings have different rights societies and manufacturing credits to a specific country, then use the particular country it points to.
I disagree with the rest of your post.
You don’t have to wait knowing everything (impossible) before starting setting what you verified first-hand (France).
It’s like if we say don’t upload booklet front cover scan of you have not scanned all pages, first.
Indeed, it is very hard to verify what exact countries should be used for these multiple European country releases. Thus, Europe exists as a release country in the database. Made in the E.U. is indeed not an automatic indication of Europe being the right country, it’s just that releases with that on it tend not to have regional pressing plant variations.
Bad analogy, by the way. Europe + France is more like uploading a scan and then uploading a tiny area of the same cover scan again for no reason.
The release country doc should probably be updated to read “specific country/countries unknown” to prevent confusion in the future, if consensus is to not list individual countries in addition.
perhaps a good stopgap would be to add a section to the annotation similar to the one a-tisket does for digital releases (an example), perhaps no matter which way the release events end up.
for example, something like:
== Confirmed available in ==
* France ([date here])
* Spain ([date here], confirmed by [username here])
* Germany
I have had this debate many times in editing notes, and have been convinced by respected AEs to add countries as we know them. Otherwise we just end up with a vague Europe on everything and that is just plain incorrect. Many people do not take part in this forum so it is hard to get their voices here.
MB should not be removing facts. Especially as release dates are often different in different countries. There are only a few pressing plants in operation across Europe and a UK band will often press something in Germany, but only sell in the UK. This is what the Release Country is for.
I do not understand why people are against facts when we have the situation where a Digital release will list every country it is distributed to. If it can be shown a CD was directly released in a country then MB should be able to show this.
If you don’t want this in your tag data, then you can get Picard to just add Europe.
Discog’s policy is built around their limited interface. MB’s interface is designed to add multiple Release countries and dates.
Digging up this thread because I was just pinged for marking a release as ‘Europe’ and I’m trying to understand it better. I agree that Musicbrainz should not remove facts and should aim to have the highest quality data, but it’s all a learning experience. Everyone is here because they love music and collecting it, and most editors are just trying to include the most accurate data, but that is perhaps not always clearly defined.
To draw a comparison for the ‘Europe’ label, there are many releases that are released and marketed as ‘worldwide’ from the label - increasingly for CDs nowadays for smaller artists, as they make a limited amount of sales and can only justify one pressing run worldwide. It would make little sense to add a release event for an editor’s specific country anytime they found a worldwide release in their local record store - all that would achieve would be to fill the database with detritus.
There are also many releases that labels manufacture and market to ‘Europe’, complete with cataogue ID and label stating ‘Europe’, yet people insist on doing the same for those releases?
I think that the release country information only makes sense in the traditional interpretation of ‘where was the label issuing this release to - i.e. the primary market’ (a specific and definable answer the issuer assigns), not ‘where did you buy this record from’ (a variable and changing answer the issuer and label have no control over, which I doubt Musicbrains intends to document).
It seems like that point is the fundamental disagreement here?
If that’s the case we could seek advice from the MB overlords as to better define / clarify?
I see other threads discussing the same eg Country is
Just to add my €0.02: I think the reason that the Europe area is useful is precisely because it is vague. The point is that many large labels issue a separate release for different markets, not countries; generally at least one aimed at the American market, one for the European market. This doesn’t mean the EU — it will almost definitely include countries not in the EU — and may include countries outside Europe that the label considers fit within the Europe market, even if not actually in Europe.
Very often I see duplicate releases because the editor assumes this release is from their own country (because this is where they bought it), but if you look at the scans and IDs, it’s evidently the same release, the label distributed it all over Europe.
That is not to say every release issue in Europe is a European release. A Romanian folk releases entirely in Romanian by a Romanian label is a Romanian release, it’s not intended for the vague European market, only for one country.
However, for “big” artists the general case is we do have these vague “European” releases, that you can’t know exactly in which countries they were released, but you can see were clearly intended for the “European” market.
This is something different from specific relationships like “manufactured in” where we often have “European Union” which is not vague at all and refers to a specific set of countries. “European Union” is not synonymous with “Europe”, and I don’t think you should pick it in its place.
It’s a confirmation that it is sold in this country, I don’t assume it’s only sold here.
I keep Europe and then if people can additionally confirm their countries for sure, very good.
For relationships, I would select EU if I could, but I use Europe credited as EU / the E.U. etc. depending on what’s printed, because there is only Europe in MB.
This is the kind of point I was picking up on. “Europe” is a continent that stretches from Ireland to Russia, Iceland to Cyprus. Many releases are only ever in a small number of countries within that area.
Unlike Discogs, MB has the ability to set multiple release countries. Each with a separate date. This is worth making use of.
Just because something appeared in both UK and Germany does not mean it was in the whole of Europe. A CD for a small band pressed in France and sold in the UK was probably not available in Russia.
Discogs has a slightly odd attitude to separate European countries. We don’t have to copy that here. The interface allows multiple countries and is more interesting when it is used.
It is okay to have Europe and other named countries.
I’m not going to go off onto tangents about before 1994 where things really were very different…,
Yes, my point is that all three options (Europe, EU, individual countries) are appropriate for different situations: Europe for releases for the European market, individual countries for release for individual countries, EU for credits for the actual EU.
I understand why you and other people do this, but I think this is a mistake:
EU isn’t an alias for the Europe, these are different entities and should not be confused.
Doing this helps hide the fact that the missing EU area is a serious issue.
“Europe” doesn’t mean every square meter of the European continent, it means the release is intended for the European market. Which regions exactly, only the label will know. Releases for specific European countries should, of course, be marked as releases of those countries.
“EU” is not an option in the MB countries list. Even though it appears on more releases than “Europe” when looking at manufacturing credits. Closest we can get to a “EU” credit is select Europe and use “credited as”.
By using the “credited as” option it makes it clear that it is only the small trading group which is a little less than half of the actual continent. If anything, that does not “hide the fact” that EU is missing from the list, it helps to show how much it is actually needed. If EU was ever added as a selectable option it would then be easy to transfer those across.
I think I agree with your last paragraph. Europe is a vague geographic term hence why the ability to add specific countries along side that is good. I think it is the only continent that appears in the country list.
I was reading this topic in the light of today’s improvements and saw this argument for adding an EU area in MB in 2016, I think it’s no longer needed:
BTW now we do have AC on area relationships, I don’t need EU area anymore, as it’s a political group of countries that does not represent an area. And it is changing.
I think Europe as the EU (or E.U. etc., depending on what’s printed) is fine for relationships.
But the main topic about please don’t remove confirmed release countries from Europe releases is still the current debate.
