How should individually distributed music videos originally released on a DVD-Video be represented?

MusicBrainz
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1

Indie Records released several DVD-Videos containing live and studio performances.

Later, with the expansion of digital platforms, the individual video tracks from those DVD-Videos were distributed separately to DSPs and YouTube as individual music video products.

These are not merely individual YouTube uploads. Each music video was formally delivered by the distributor as a separate digital product and has:

  • its own UPC assigned by the distributor;

  • its own release date;

  • an individual product entry on DSPs;

  • one video track;

  • the same video ISRC originally assigned to the corresponding track on the DVD-Video.

The distributor-assigned UPCs appear to be generic or automatically generated, but each one identifies a separate delivered product.

Example release group:

Original DVD-Video:

Digital audio album containing most of the corresponding performances:

The audio-only recordings and the video recordings have different ISRCs, even when they represent the same live or studio performance.

My intended structure would be:

  1. Keep the existing video Recording used on the DVD-Video.

  2. Preserve its original video ISRC.

  3. Relate it to the corresponding audio Recording using the “music video for” relationship.

  4. Create a separate one-track digital Release for each independently distributed music video.

  5. Reuse the existing video Recording on that digital Release, rather than create a duplicate Recording.

My questions are:

  1. Is a formally distributed music video with its own UPC and release date correctly represented as a one-track digital Release?

  2. Should the existing video Recording from the original DVD-Video be reused on that Release?

  3. Should each independently distributed music video have its own Release Group?

  4. Would Single be the appropriate primary Release Group type?

  5. For live performances, should the Release Group also use the secondary type Live?

  6. If an audio single of the same performance also exists, should the audio single and the music video be placed in the same Release Group, or should they remain in separate Release Groups?

  7. Should the DSP and YouTube URLs be linked to the video Recording, to the digital Release, or to both depending on the type of URL?

For additional context, our internal rights systems represent these items differently.

The rights-management system may show the same music video both as a video asset and as a phonogram-related asset. For Brazilian public-performance registration, only the musical soundtrack is relevant, and the commercial product identified by the UPC is not represented.

However, I understand that this internal treatment should not determine the MusicBrainz structure. I mention it only to explain why it is important for us to distinguish clearly between:

  • the audio Recording;

  • the video Recording;

  • the original DVD-Video Release;

  • the individual digital music video Release.

Before applying this structure to a large number of titles in the label catalogue, I would appreciate confirmation that this is the preferred MusicBrainz approach.

2

(Editing my response because I misunderstood the form of the original release; I thought the DVD contained an entire concert as one recording but I see they are broken up into songs.)

Sounds like a good plan!

For question 1, since releases in MB can only have one UPC you have to create separate releases for each video in order to include that information. If it’s the same performance, I don’t see why the audio single and video shouldn’t be in the same release group. I’d answer your questions as Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Same, It depends on the type of URL.

3

to answer your questions in order, I would say:

  1. yes, to the point mentioned above
  2. yes, unless you know there are audio or major video differences (tho there’s no guidance on how to split video recordings currently). video resolution likely isn’t a major enough difference, but aspect ratio might be
  3. yes, because they have very different contents
  4. I’ve personally been leaving the release type blank for video releases (especially video singles) as there’s currently no guidance on that
  5. yes, I would use Live if it’s a live recording
  6. I generally err on the side of seperate entities, so I would keep them in seperate release groups. they could always be merged later once a consensus is reached (see the thread below)
  7. I’d go both, as appropriate

there is an open discussion on how to handle video as releases in MusicBrainz, I’ll link it below

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