Manufacturing credits - depreciated or still in development?

MusicBrainz
Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fd29d9b8d28>
#1

Hi,
So far I have used manufacturing relationships only occasionally, although I could add them for every release I edit (because I do research on it anyway). But there would be considerable work to on the places (the plants). Information on the plants is spars and existing relationships are often wrong.*

But I before I start working on it, I would like to ask if it’s recommended to use these relationships at all. (?)
I know, there are cases, where represses, considered to belong to the same release, were pressed by another plant…
Should I start to add and work on “manufactured/glass mastered/pressed at” relationships?

*) Examples:
WEA mfg. Commerce was not relocated from Allied Record Company and not relocated to Cinram Commerce as it’s all the same plant. (and it’s history goes back much further)
WEA Mfg. Olyphant has a correct Discogs link, but it’s not a a separate entity as there’s Technicolor Pressing Plant with all the aliases, but no further information/link.
If those plants should be credited, there has to be at least some information how to identify them.

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#2

Usually I set a manufacturer relationship, following what is printed on the matrix.
You can do so, and it warrants for a different release, if the manufacturers is different.
I don’t think it is deprecated, there would be a warning, if so.

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#3

I didn’t expect that it’s really depreciated, but I haven’t found such credits rather often. (in fact never)
But I would like to do.

#4

You can browse to some manufacturers (labels) to see many relationships. :wink:

Update
Oh I see, you are talking about places… Mmh, that sounds difficult. :thinking:

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#5

Funnily enough I have been looking at this myself only this week. Cleaning up the Hanover manufacturing of Polydor\ PDO \ PMDC \ EDC. And then chasing similar plants in the UK. It is not as complex as it initially seems. And Discogs is a great reference.

You start to realise that the plant just gets renamed. Different owners take over. MusicBrainz lists these as different LABELS

I’ve been cleaning these up this week. Aiming to make it clearer for Hanover and added more details to annotation, and better links to the “renamed to”





These are all in the same location, but the owners swap. Very common in CD production in many countries. It is the Owners name we see stamped on the matrix.

There is more complexity as the data on the disk and paperwork is often out of sync with the actual owners of the plant. Polydor\PDO\ PMDC\ etc at the Hanover plant would often still be using the original booklets and glass masters from the previous owners with previous details on them. I had a 1994 CD with a SID code on it, but the booklet and face of the CD still said Made in West Germany.

I started to chase up the UK plants too, but then hit a puzzle. Is it a Label \ Manufacturer? Or a Place \ Plant? I’ve always associated manufacturing to a Label, but then noticed that a lot of the Sony DADC data is linked to Places. The Southwater, UK plant appears in the database twice as it is here as a label and a place. Depending on who owns it.

LABELs based at Southwater, UK showing the different owners
https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=southwater&type=label&method=indexed

But also confusingly as a PLACE https://musicbrainz.org/place/ee7afc43-a4ed-4f81-bf89-ffb2d667b2fc

But as a place it can’t show the multiple owners. Which I think is your initial problem? So surely these should be Labels? Or four different places? Certainly should not have those four different Discogs links to the same page.

I am already reading wider on this subject and looking at making the links within MB more accurate. Last night I was researching a South African plant!

#6

So glad you asked this stuff…

Looking at those examples, they surely should be Label \ Manufacturing? Look at how the database refers to the data as “Performances”.

image

This is the kind of research I enjoy doing, and then making the relevant corrections. Before going too deep we need some guidance as to what the Database guys actually think. Why do we have a “processing plant” listed alongside the concert halls? Isn’t “manufacturing” done by a label? It is certainly where the manufacturing relationships live.

As I understood it, a “place” is only used when there is a vague “Pressed in USA” listed and no accurate name of the plant available for a correct Label relationship.

This is what WEA Mfg, Olyphant should be using

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#7

The difference in using labels (=companies) or places (=facilities) is that a new owner makes a new label, but the place stays the same.
There’s a reason why not many releases on Discogs have “pressed by” credits. You must not credit plants by mould SID, because it was mostly used by it’s successor too. But it’s well possible to credit “pressed at” a place by mould SID (in most cases). I would like to credit mainly places. That’s what is missing on Discogs.

Of course there are lots of credits (even for places), but I never stumbled over them when editing my releases. And a lot more are not credited yet. :wink:

#8

I’ll throw you a couple of popular European plants for the UK market. I know I add plenty to these


I think these locations are more stable. EMI are the main (only?) owner of both. Go read Discogs for much better histories. I want to bring those details over to MB but don’t want to just copy paste. So working on re-writing them to give better identification for MB.

Pretty sure that MB is more about the “label” than a “place”, but we wait for the DB guys to respond.

A Place can still change. That is why there is a “rename to” relationship. And I think it should change as a new owner takes over and rebrands the manufacturing. But I need to read more.

Personally I add these details as often as I can to my releases. I have one Release I own that is on two identical CDs. Identical paperwork with it. Identical printed fronts on the CD. But look at the matrix and one is Made in Germany by PMDC and the other Made in Germany by PDO. It is the example I added to the “two identical discIDs thread” the other day.

#9

In 2004 Uden was purchased by Mediamotion, but still kept it’s characteristic pressing imprints - luckily, because mould SIDs may have been transferred to other Mediamotion plants. But that’s the point. If it’s not known if the disc was pressed before or after 2004, you can’t decide wether it’s pressed by EMI Uden or MediaMotion, but it was pressed by EMI … although this place should NOT have this name. Most of the plants/places are named after it’s last name, e.g. EDC Germany for the Langenhagen plant… :upside_down_face:
And yours…

… are both pressed at the EDC plant.

#10

In this case we use the Area entity, not Place.

Actually, even if I have already set a Release-Label manufactured relationship, I also set the Release-Area manufactured relationship when both are printed.
This is always better when labels can become complex to follow with time.

I didn’t know there was a Release-Place manufacturer relationship. But I would rather like that anyway we use Places only for recording and performance, not for material production, for which Labels can be enough.

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#11

Weird guess without seeing them. These both have very old, solid silvered centres. I assume that EDC wasn’t still making that error once they took over the plant in 2005? And I’ll have to check, but I am fairly sure I had them both on my shelf well before then.

I doubt doubt that these two are going to be old disks of the PDO \ PMDC era. The PDO version has no SID codes at all and a very solid centre hub.

I don’t see the logic in assuming everything is made by the last owner of the plant.

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#12

A Release-Place relationship does not require anything explicitly printed, only discs which can be identified to be manufactured by a plant - characteristic glass mastering code, mould SID used by the plant.

… of course “pressed at” is shown under “Performances” using a Release-Place relationship. Although pressing is also “performed” :wink:
But I wasn’t sure either. That’s why I asked.

I completed the Olyphant plant for an example (an annotation with instructions how to credit is still missing)

#13

Sorry, I often get the database language wrong as I don’t know the scheme that well. I just understand it through the interface.

Currently, just looking at the examples in this thread, we seem to have both Label \ Manufactured and Area \ Pressing Plant being commonly used in equal measures. This is certainly leading to some confusion. Especially as the “place” seems to be wiping out the history of ownership of the plant by just piling everything into one.

At least with the Label there is the “previously known as” links that allow things to be kept more separated in the same manner as Discogs does.

Currently both systems are correct, but the “area” method looses details.

#14

It’s not made by the last owner (that would be a label), it was made at the plant, still at the same location.

#15

Not entirely - look at my example. But it is a bit confusing, that’s a real problem.

#16

Places get renamed and have to rely on the name being type in. Whereas the labels are separately selectable entities. I already started to find it interesting to spot an age of a German pressed CD just by looking at the PDO\PDMC\etc name. The Place being the same seems to wipe this difference.

And knowing if you have a Blackburn PDO disk is pretty important with their rot issues. Something that was sorted out by later owners.

These details also give a guide to dates when no actual date is available.

I guess we need to now put both? Label as shown on the disk and the place? That seems a little backwards to me. This is why Label makes more sense to me. (I wish I could remember back to who showed that to me many year back)

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#17

I’ve just noticed something. A quick look at the edit history of the Area \ Processing Plant examples in this thread and they are all fairly new. 2018 \ 2019 creations. That explains why I have always gone the Label\ Manufacturing route. I was using the older method and guess I missed the discussion about changing to places?

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#18

If PDO and PMDC are aliases (and they are) you will find the pressing plant by typing in the aliases.
And, yes, I’ve noticed that these place-release relationships were included recently. But should we continue using them?

The problem is that there’s no owner independent name of the plants. Maybe they should be named after the location, e.g. “Pressing plant Uden” with all it’s names as aliases. That would make it less confusing.

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#19

What I meant by that comment was that by putting ALL versions into the single place stops you being able to do a database search on the PDO discs.

I don’t understand why the loss of separation would be preferred.

I understand they are all “pressed in the same place”, but it is more interesting to me as to who was in charge when my disc was pressed. Especially as that is the information printed on the disk.

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#20

But that results in no pressing credits, if it’s not known because you do not know when exactly it was pressed. That happens on Discogs all the time.