For those who don’t know, Kanye West released his album The Life of Pablo on the streaming service Tidal in February (currently in MB). Starting in March, he began releasing new mixes/updates, which will seem to continue until… well, nobody really knows if/when a “final mix” will be released.
At least one of the updated mixes has been released as a single (just added this myself), while other versions of various mixes are floating around Kanye’s Soundcloud.
This poses an interesting challenge - assuming several mixes are released before the “final mix”, should each be added as a new, separate release, with new, separate recordings? What I did when adding the “Famous” single was create a new recording with the disambiguation “second mix w/ altered lyric”, as that’s a change that had been widely reported/confirmed, and added disambiguation to the original mix. Unfortunately, I don’t have Tidal to verify if every track has been changed. Someone added a new release based on an updated mix released this month, but they just linked all the recordings to the first mix
What are your thoughts on best practices for albums released mid-process? It’s a fascinating use of the streaming medium, and I imagine we’ll see more of these from Kanye at the very least.
EDIT: Fixed hyperlinks