I’m asking because of this edit, which together with this merge effectively will replace the Label Deutsche Grammophon Resonance by the Label Deutsche Grammophon, together with putting it into the Series Resonance.
As I never really understood the rules for what is a Label and what is not: Is this the right way to do it? Is “Deutsche Grammophon Resonance” a proper Label on its own or not?
If it should indeed be Label “Deutsche Grammophon” + Series “Resonance”, a lot of releases are affected. The Series Resonance only has 4 releases, but the Label Deutsche Grammophon Resonance has several dozens. Furthermore, also the Labels Deutsche Grammophon Musikfest, Deutsche Grammophon Privilege, Deutsche Grammophon Favorit, Deutsche Grammophon Junior, Deutsche Grammophon Literatur would be affected.
In this case, I would like to press for someone doing all the necessary changes by a script, and in the end add a disambiguation to all the empty Labels “Deutsche Grammophon something” saying "Don’t use this. Use “Deutsche Grammophon” + Series “something” instead. To make sure that we have consistent data in the future. Otherwise people will just continue adding releases to the Labels “Deutsche Grammophon something”.
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According to label itself it’s a series. For example their ad on US magazines “Introducing Resonance, Deutsche Grammophon’s new low-price series. Budget building blocks for your classical music library. Imported pressings. List price $6,98”.
Discogs doesn’t count it as a label and mentions “This is a series, not a label on it’s own. Only add it in series field, together with the actual label of the release”.
Yeah, my personal feeling is that it should be a series, too. But my feeling concerning labels consistently turns out to be conflicting with the way labels are dealt with in musicbrainz. In the past, I used the “Deutsche Grammophon something” labels, just because this appeared to be the way everyone else was doing it.
I really would like to read the opinion on this case of one of the label experts here.
Please, could the label experts have a look on this?
If there is no response, I will go ahead and start changing it to Label “Deutsche Grammophon” + Series “something”. Will need the help of some scripting guru then.
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This seems fine. I’m not sure whether we should keep the label around somehow with a note to avoid people re-adding it and using it, or if a redirect to DG + alias will be enough…
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ok, thanks. Now I did the change for Resonance, Musikfest, Privilege and Favorit, which is that I’ve created a new series (except Resonance which was already there). I’ve added a “don’t use” warning to the disambiguation of the label versions, and some instruction to their annotations.
These 4 cases are very similar, all are reissue series (btw: Why does Deutsche Grammophon need 4 of them?)
The two remaining cases Deutsche Grammophon Junior and Deutsche Grammophon Literatur feel a bit different to me. I stopped and reverted the change for “Literatur” when I was half way through and realized that this appears to be more independent than the first 4.
Label experts: What about Deutsche Grammophon Junior and Deutsche Grammophon Literatur? Are they proper labels on their own, or should they be converted to series, too?
I think you’re right to keep Deutsche Grammophon Literatur as a label, it looks as though it has its own Label Code 13542, which began to be used around 2005. Earlier releases under the Deutsche Grammophon Literatur brand seem to usually display the Deutsche Grammophon Label Code 0173.
Looking closely at Deutsche Grammophon Resonance I’m not sure I would regard it as a Series either. Looking at the guidelines (emphasis mine):
A series is a sequence of separate release groups, releases, recordings, works or events with a common theme. The theme is usually prominent in the branding of the entities in the series and the individual entities will often have been given a number indicating the position in the series.
What’s the common theme? Looking at two releases on Resonance: this 1974 LP and this 1994 CD, it doesn’t seem obvious to me that they’re part of the same series. The branding is different and the catalogue numbers don’t have a sequential relation. The 1994 release also lacks the standard Deutsche Grammophon logo (below) which is a problem if it’s supposed be the new release label.
http://www.universal-music.co.jp/media/2092033/071128_grammophon.gif
This might be an overly strict interpretation of the guideline, and I don’t think it’s wrong to describe Resonance as a series, the question I have is whether it’s a legitimate Series Entity.
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Old LP releases by DG have catalog numbers in different format than CD releases by the same label. So this isn’t just related to this series but to all releases by this label. They have actually changed formatting of catalog numbers couple of times already.
1994 CD doesn’t have Deutsche Grammophon logo on it at all, not even on medium. My guess is that what first started as series (as advertised by the label) later became an imprint during 90s. Releases before 1990 have “RESONANCE” under standard DG logo but medium doesn’t have series name printed on it. Later releases have different logo without label name and don’t have standard DG logo printed anywhere.
Just found a label Resonance, without “Deutsche Grammphon”. The annotation says "Subsidiary of Sanctuary Classics, releasing budget boxsets of classical music."
Maybe the 1994 CD in fact belongs to that Label and is completely independent of Deutsche Grammophon?
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1994 CD is related to the DG because of “An Original Deutsche Grammophon recording” at the back cover. It also looks like typical DG release from that time. Medium and back cover uses same or similar layout as on DG releases. Medium is also having label code of DG.
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On my last post: Now I think that Resonance is yet something different. There are three releases in it. This one has our 1994 style. But it is not a boxset (see annotation) and might be ill-places. The other two are boxsets and have a different style.
ListMyCDs.com: ok, thanks
I think I lean towards the following solution:
- Put all the releases with the standard logo “Deutsche Grammophon” and the script “Resonance” below to the series “Resonance”.
- For everything of the style of the 1994 CD: It’s hard to justify why they should belong to the series. In fact, it’s hard to justify why they should go to the Label “Deutsche Grammophon”, which actually isn’t there. Thus, we have to create a new Label “Resonance” (without “Deutsche Grammophon”) for them.
I’m not in favour of splitting up the “Resonance” branded releases. I think it would be better to keep the current label “Deutsche Grammophon Resonance” as it was, but rename it to just “Resonance”, then go through and add “Deutsche Grammophon” as a second release label on the earlier releases.
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I think we have to split the two "Resonance"s no matter what the outcome of the series discussion is. They cannot be the same label since the logos are completely different and one has “Deutsche Grammophon” in the name, but the other one has not.
Actually, I already went ahead and created the new Resonance label for the releases in the 1994 style.
The logos are different but they’re not that different. Check out these two releases: 1991 vs 1994 (especially the design layout of the back and spine). I think it would be fine to have these two releases under the same label. A label’s logo is allowed to vary over its lifetime.
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I did now look more closely two these 2 different logos. I didn’t notice earlier that the thing on the top of DG logo (above Deutsche Grammophon text) is the same thing as on resonance logo which doesn’t have label name mentioned. These are quite similar. I would say that these both could go to same series. DG label itself advertises it as a series so it makes little sense to handle it as a separate label. I would move all these Resonance releases under Deutsche Grammophon label and link with the series.
Interesting, didn’t notice this either.
Still: Your suggestion means that releases in the 1994 style should go to the label “Deutsche Grammophon”, even though the lettering on the logo reads “Resonance” (without mentioning “Deutsche Grammophon”). Is this really in complience with the label guidelines??
I guess you are referring to this:[quote=“ListMyCDs.com, post:2, topic:181449”]
“Introducing Resonance, Deutsche Grammophon’s new low-price series. Budget building blocks for your classical music library. Imported pressings. List price $6,98”
[/quote]
I put it to google, and found that it was an advertisement in some journal of the year 1980, and it shows the old logo.
What about the 1994 logo? Did Deutsche Grammophon still call it a series?
And to come back to my initial point: Right now we are doing some guessing based on somewhat randomly chosen arguments. Isn’t there a way to cleanly derive the answer from the official guidelines?
What we have about labels is here and it provides little help with this situation. 1994 logo could be counted as an separate imprint (as separate label) but I see no benefit of splitting the series (1994 version as label and another as series). The more options we offer for editors the more confusing it gets and editors keep selecting wrong labels. We are still talking about only couple of releases.
Older vinyl releases were including catalog of the the series with cover pics and the word used on the title was series. I haven’t found anything related to new logo.
What I don’t like about putting the 1994 version to the label “Deutsche Grammophon”: For a normal user, it is not possible to read off the correct label from the release. Yes, the logo still contains the same decoration, but you need a serious amount of expert knowledge to associate that with “Deutsche Grammophon” (and then to deduce that “Deutsche Grammophon” is indeed the right label).
For that reason, and since the label guidelines are telling us something about branding and logos, I have serious concerns about putting those 1994 style releases to the label “Deutsche Grammophon”. The label should be Resonance, as this is the information given by the logo/branding.
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