Label using fictitious release dates

I came across a label using the release date of its releases for “artistic” purposes.

Do we have precedents / style suggestions on how to handle this / ways to identify the actual release dates from Bandcamp?

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I would start with a big annotation on the top of the label’s page pointing out that none of the date data can be trusted due to lack of a Time Machine to check.

If this was physical media, all those dates would just be deleted as we are sure they are wrong.

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See this thread:

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From reading that thread it seems that this label should just be treated as unreliable and delete all the dates. Unless someone feels like diving into social media \ fan club emails there is no trustable method to get a date for them.

I guess their “Interact” page has better dates? OR can blog pages also be manipulated?

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I’ve tried to make sense of it but I’m none the wiser

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https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release/Date

The release date is the date in which a release was made available through some sort of distribution mechanism. For example, this may be via a retail store, being published as a free download on a website or distributed to industry insiders (in the case of promotional releases) amongst other mechanisms.

Since these releases are being entered as Digital Media, we can safely discard the label’s claims that you can buy it physically decades in the future.

Probably not. Looks like some of them are listed on フューチャゴス「F​​-​​Gχ」's Community | フューチャゴス「F​​-​​Gχ」 with realistic dates.

For the sake of clarity, I meant this more as in how/where to store the fantasy release dates, but I guess the obvious response is “in an annotation, where else?”. :upside_down_face:

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If the fictional order matters, someone can also create a series and store the fake dates as the order there.

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My Bandcamp script, this one, shows:

image

I sometimes use that if there’s a made-up date. Maybe I should have checked if it’s reliable :stuck_out_tongue:
But it has been in my experience anyway.

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Those have been converted to your local timezone. The actual dates might be off by one. E.g. mod_date:

{
    "type": "album",
    "purchase_title": null,
    "download_desc_id": null,
    "art_id": 691435949,
    "credits": "[PC-ELEMENT自 + ベヘズト в е н е ѕ т Gχ]",
    "require_email": null,
    "killed": null,
    "release_date": "20 Apr 2036 00:00:00 GMT",
    "band_id": 1176166681,
    "artist": "WESTBOUND기차",
    "featured_track_id": 44352636,
    "require_email_0": null,
    "upc": null,
    "set_price": 700,
    "publish_date": "13 Dec 2019 07:14:11 GMT",
    "title": "𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐓𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐋 𝐒𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒",
    "selling_band_id": 1176166681,
    "minimum_price_nonzero": 700,
    "is_set_price": null,
    "download_pref": 2,
    "private": null,
    "mod_date": "16 Dec 2019 22:15:36 GMT",
    "audit": 0,
    "id": 642352603,
    "purchase_url": null,
    "new_desc_format": 1,
    "auto_repriced": null,
    "about": "때로는 인생에서 최선을 다할 수 없습니다. 종종 우리의 부지런함은 동기 부여에 반대합니다. 마지막 기차는 어디로 갈까요?",
    "minimum_price": 0,
    "new_date": "10 Dec 2019 07:17:13 GMT"
}

You might want to audit all your annotations and release additions containing potentially misleading dates.

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Which date is ‘misleading’? The ones that match your timezone or mine?
Does MB have any guidance there :thinking:

I mean, if they use unique fake dates, they could be moved to the catalog number field perhaps?

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