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]?
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.
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.
Because this is how iTunes works, I believe it was previously established by consensus that iTunes links without countries are “wrong” for MusicBrainz.
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.
