I don’t think it’s ever safe to err on the side of being too-inclusive. If you add The Breaker - リトル・ビッグ・タウンのアルバム - Apple Music as a JP release, you’re most certainly right - that does not mean it has not also been released elsewhere, but it is 100% correct that it’s been released there. If you add a [Worldwide] release, you’re saying that it was released everywhere, which you might not be correct about, and if so you will have introduced wrong data into the database. It seems clear to me that the safe thing to do is to only do the limited, narrowed release events until it can be shown/proven that the given release was indeed global.
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What is the use case of [Worldwide] then at all? I basically could never be sure whether there aren’t any exceptions somewhere on earth. Given the political reality I can even be rather sure there is some restriction somewhere. So the implication would be to never use worldwide at all.
So far I have done as @CyberSkull described above for digital releases. Unless there aren’t any clear signs of regional limitations and the intent seems to be to make a download available everywhere I’d use [Worldwide], fully aware that some country restrictions might apply nonetheless, often for reasons outside of the control of the download provider.
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How about [Worldwide] as defined as “accessible to enough of the global economy to be considered everywhere. Almost. Mostly.” 
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Now what happens when people start posting stuff on The Moon or Mars’ Internet? Are we gonna have the same debate about [Earth], [The Moon], [Mars] and [Solar System Wide]? 
I think most editors don’t actually make any attempt at exploring the “regional limitations” of digital releases. And it’s frankly not worth exploring the availability of digital releases because it often requires waiting 24 hours for releases to start existing in countries in different timezones.
The fact is there are absolutely regional limitations on digital releases, especially if the music isn’t from North America and Western Europe.
Here’s a “simple” example with just 3 “markets”:
- Japan
- Southeast Asia (TW, HK, SG, MY, PH, ID, …) & South Korea
- “worldwide” (which overlaps with Southeast Asia, but does not include Japan)
Here’s an example of more markets:
- Japan
- Southeast Asia (TW et al) & South Korea
- USA & Canada
- The digital entry(s) for Europe and/or Australasia is missing.
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Then this is for a release put on a no region locked web page. Like a plain web page, not a store, for instance.
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This is the logic I am currently using. I am not saying it is perfect or even the best, but it seems to follow the country selection process of iTunes…
If the URL for iTunes contains a country code, then it is not worldwide. There are some iTunes URLs that do not use a country code. As long as they remain valid without a country code, that is worldwide. It is the same distinction as CD or records, when iTunes uses a country code, that indicates a release to that country.
Here are 2 examples:
In the case the “worldwide” seems to apply: https://itunes.apple.com/album/id701119756.
In the case removal of the country code results in an invalid URL: https://itunes.apple.com/album/id1197064702, meaning it is not “worldwide”.
To follow jesus2099 statement above, you can use the non country specific URL for iTunes as shown above, if it is valid, for an iTunes reference that is not tied to a country, or worldwide.
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I’m starting to see a bunch of iTunes releases just automatically marked as Worldwide again before they even come out and when you try to edit them to not be worldwide I get voted down. Some editors just insist that they are worldwide when they are not. Some examples:
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/45150446
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/45000331
Wanted to add a quick thought on the first link. That is not even released yet, so you cannot really even say where it will be released. What gets filled in is where a product was released. When it is not yet released, there is no data. I often see iTunes not use a country code until it is released. It would be my opinion that a release that is not released (or does not have all the info) should not be entered as though it does. However, the worldwide iTunes link (without specifying a country code) does work. Wonder what others think on that…
On the second one, that one seems to be worldwide as this link works:
It would appear to me that the first one is worldwide (at least for now) and the second is worldwide.
The older discussion is definitely helpful, but it covers how to mark alternatives to [Worldwide], whether geo links may be discontinued, and which direction is safe to err in as well as whether those links count for [Worldwide]. With all this, it seems different people have taken different answers from this thread, with @tigerman325 (among others) reading this as “iTunes is never [Worldwide]” and @thwaller and me (among others) reading it as “non-region-locked iTunes is evidence of [Worldwide]”. We could all probably benefit from a direct statement – without touching on broader topics, at least for the moment – answering the question:
Does an iTunes link without a region code, as in @thwaller’s example, count as [Worldwide] because it works wherever the store does, or does the fact that iTunes music is only available in some countries mean it’s inherently not [Worldwide]?
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Except that iTunes isn’t worldwide, so therefore it should never be worldwide when the only reference is iTunes, IMO.
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Thanks for explaining it this way as it’s exactly what I was trying to say, but I’m not good at explaining things. 
Glad to help!
On an interesting note, I figured it might be helpful to have a script to check all the store pages for release availability, and even using @thwaller’s region-free link, Bahrain (code bh) was acting like the album wasn’t available. If someone can find an album that does appear for that region, it’s pretty irrefutable proof that a region-free link isn’t worldwide. It would be best to find a working bh example before saying that, though.
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Thanks! Definitely seems like the region-free links aren’t [Worldwide] then.
I could very well be wrong, but it is my understanding that a region free link is available anywhere using the region free link. The regional links are for some reason made specific to that region. But having a region free ink does not mean that it will work on any or all of the regional links.
I have nothing to solidly confirm that statement, it is my understanding from prior work I did. I would need to do some looking for sources in order to say that I know that to be true.
What are you referring to when you say “region free link”?
If you are referring to a URL like this - https://itunes.apple.com/album/humanz-deluxe/id1217901291 - then you are actually referring to a US link. This link is not supposed to work, because this release is not available in the US store, but it does exist in the JP store: https://itunes.apple.com/jp/album/humanz-deluxe/id1217901291
Because this is how iTunes works, I believe it was previously established by consensus that iTunes links without countries are “wrong” for MusicBrainz.
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For your example, the link: https://itunes.apple.com/album/humanz-deluxe/id1217901291
does not work, thus is not worldwide. It is a JP release as the link: https://itunes.apple.com/jp/album/humanz-deluxe/id1217901291
does work. Just as https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/humanz-deluxe/id1217901291 will not work, it is not a GB release.
Is this what you are pointing out? If I am on the same understanding as the others who have posted, a “region free link” is meaning a link without a country code (ie US).
Looking at it, I believe the JSON output does support that being tied to the US store. Example from above: http://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=701119756 does indicate the country is USA, so without specifying a country code on the lookup, it appears to default to US.
The issue has previously been discussed here, although as with this topic the original topic was something else:
In that topic, @jesus2099 suggested using [Worldwide] as a placeholder along with entries for one or more countries. Including this idea, there are three different approaches:
- One release event per country available
[Worldwide]as a placeholder[Worldwide]as “almost worldwide”
Some of you have implied that using [Worldwide] is “[introducing] wrong data into the database”, but it is in fact not so if we define [Worldwide] to mean “worldwide (with restrictions)” in the guidelines. We could even introduce a new [Worldwide (with restrictions)] area, but I don’t think this would be a necessary distinction because releases can never actually be entirely worldwide anyway.
With the issue of correctness out of the way, this is from a perspective of usefulness. It just seems like a whole lot of useless data to have every iTunes release with no restrictions of its own list every single country that iTunes is available in as release events. A script could easily make this happen, but do we really want one to?
Thank you @yindesu for clearing up the confusion regarding the US URLs.
The topic seems to have diverged completely from the original discussion. Perhaps a mod could split it? The geo URL seems very useful to me, possibly useful enough to list instead of one regional URL for each country as we do now (regardless of the conclusion of this discussion). Definitely useful enough to list it along with regional URLs for a start. Unfortunately, MusicBrainz Server currently seems to mistakenly edit it into the US URL when entered.
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