How to pick the "main" release from a release-group

MusicBrainz Development
1

hello,
I’m wondering how I should pick the tracklist and other infos (mainly, the “status”) from a particular release-group.
For example, when I search on Musicbrainz website the Beatles discography, I get the main official albums on the top, but if I query all the release-group for the Beatles (primary-type = Album), I got a lot of entries (for example, bootlegs too). I can’t filter those release-group because the info (“status” = “Official”) is stored in the Release table and not on the Release-Group table.
I also tried to filter by primary-type and secondary-types, but I noticed that some bootlegs are marked as “primary-type = album” and have no secondary-type, so it’s impossible to filter those out at release-group level.

So how should I get the “right” release for each release-group? should I get the first on the list, or maybe the oldest? or is there another way to determine it?

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2

I’d use probably the oldest one that has the status official (because sometimes there are promotional pre-releases). If there is no official one than the entire release group is for a bootleg or promo release only.

The oldest one can still give you multiple versions, e.g. CD vs. Vinyl, limited edition or different country.

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