Hi!
What do y’all think of a release such as this: https://musicbrainz.org/release/c1b12922-de14-49f2-8737-395c75ebba01
It’s a collection of songs that was apparently shared with a torrent. I could not find a clear consensus whether such a bootleg is a valid release for MB or not.
Personally, I’m reluctant. I think it opens the gates for too much “junk” releases, and I’d like to delete this release. But is there a rule, or a consensus?
I think it is a little too random to be a useful release. Years ago I added this bootleg, because it contains a researched list of most samples from DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing album. My rationale was that it is of interest to a lot of fans of DJ Shadow’s album (which is considered a classic). But that playlist is just a random list with random tracks made up by a random person.
Of course this is a bit of a grey area that should be decided case by case.
I am new here, so my opinion has nothing to do with “rules”.
But, really, let’s use some common sense — it is someone’s iPod playlist. It is not an album.
At first I also thought it was just somebody’s personal playlist, but after reviewing the Contact Us page on their website, this appears to be a legitimate venue for indie artists to publish their work.
but that isn’t really one person posting their work. It is someone who created a “compilation” of others works. So, to me, unless we see some form of verification that it was an official release, especially with it being traded on torrents, it is still just someone’s iPod playlist.
Again, full disclaimer, I am still learning, so there may be “rules” that say otherwise.
Just remember that not everything distributed via torrent is illegal / immoral / whatever. In some cases it’s used to shift load away from a distribution server. For example, there are some Linux distros that do that.
I was just pointing out that it seems in this case that the artists are providing their work (in the form of music files accompanied with additional information) directly to someone representing the site, who in turn aggregates the submissions and releases a monthly collection. Perhaps this would be more appropriately tagged as a Bootleg rather than an Official release, but in my opinion it appears to be more than just “someone’s iPod playlist”. Your opinion differs from mine, and that’s okay. 
Even if a legitimate download, I would still expect some other source available saying what was released.
Musicbrainz allows bootlegs, if they’re “notable” enough.
That is a very grey area, and open to interpretation. But it definitely means that just because something is only available online doesn’t disqualify it.
In the case of the Indie/Rock Playlist torrent series I’ve actually heard of them before, so I would say they’re pretty notable.
Personally I wouldn’t worry about it so much, MusicBrainz hides bootleg releases from view for a reason, and we don’t allow linking to illegal downloads. One thing I definitely would take issue with though is the misrepresentation of bootlegs - not being honest about the source or passing them off as official.