Recently, Monstercat acquired Silk Music, and the 2 labels have been merged into one, with Silk Music becoming Monstercat’s “Monstercat Silk” brand (alongside the existing “Monstercat Uncaged” and “Monstercat Instinct”). How should this event be handled in MusicBrainz? Should the 2 labels remain separate, or should they be merged? As for the releases, should “re-releases” be made under their release groups, or should they be moved?
It’s a bit of an exceptional situation, so I just want to clarify how this should be represented in MusicBrainz before making any changes.
They would stay on the old label. If a release is re-released on the new label, you can add the new release with the new label in the same release group.
Hmm, I’m not 100% sure what would constitute a release in this situation. Both labels rarely have physical releases, and mostly distribute digital media. As an example, take Kaiyan - Apollo 11, a release from Silk Music before the acquisition and merger, that now appears on Monstercat’s official website. The page linked shows a release date of 6/1/2021, which was the date it was released on Silk Music, but it only appeared in Monstercat’s catalog on 22/3/2021 (the same date as all other pre-acquisition releases). Does this constitute a new release, and if so, which is the correct release date?
We thought you were about physical releases.
For physical releases, you keep the printed label.
For download releases, I have no opinion, but I’m tagging this topic now.
Ok, so all Silk Music releases before the merge remain on Silk Music, but Silk releases after the merge go to Monstercat? If so, I’ll add an annotation to both labels noting that. Thanks for the help!
