Let’s say a release appears on a streaming service — we’ll use Apple Music as an example — and is also available to stream/download on Bandcamp.
Is this considered the same release? In other words, would only one MusicBrainz release entry be created for it? Or should it be a release group that includes two separate releases, one of them for the Apple Music version and one for the Bandcamp version?
for Bandcamp specifically, I’ll usually add a seperate release, as in the areas I work, usually the artist uploads the tracks to Bandcamp themselves (there’s no label involved), but for several streaming platforms (Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, TIDAL, and others) you need to have a distributor to get your music on there, and most distributors I’ve seen let you push your music to many platforms. so you’d end up with a streaming release (with a distributor relationship, if possible) and a Bandcamp (or SoundCloud) release, like these examples:
side note, if you aren’t using Harmony, you prolly should. it’s an invaluable tool for dealing with streaming releases, lol
It’s important to note that Bandcamp releases also can have barcodes. If they do and it matches the one from Spotify etc., and the release also otherwise is the same (cover art, track list), then it should also be just one release on MB.
I’m tending to disagree about combining these, since there are distributors on the Streaming™ release that (in my experience and in the areas I usually edit) usually aren’t involved with the Bandcamp or SoundCloud releases at all…
is it always the case, I honestly couldn’t tell you. there might be some distributors who also put music on Bandcamp or SoundCloud, but I think it’s safer to err on the side of splitting in these cases
that said, it is good to note that Bandcamp and SoundCloud releases can have barcodes, just like Streaming™ releases (and Harmony can see them too, at least on Bandcamp, as SoundCloud isn’t supported yet)
Thanks for the recommendations to check out Harmony — this is my first time hearing about that site.
For the release that prompted me to ask about this, the Bandcamp release does have a barcode, and when I looked it up on Harmony, it matched the same release on Spotify, Deezer, iTunes and Tidal. So in this case, combining them seems to make sense.
I’m of the mind that a digital release is a digital release is a digital release, but I can also see the reasoning for the other perspective. Going forward, I’ll use the presence (or lack of) a barcode on Bandcamp as a point of reference.
I don’t really see the value in separating otherwise identical releases. Does it matter who did the upload? It’s like deciding for separate releases based on who put it on the shelf.
Spotify etc. force the artists to use some third-party service to upload music. But it’s still them or their label who initiate this. And if the same barcode is used this strongly indicates that this was even a unified process. Bandcamp does not require a barcode, and in my experience the majority of releases there doesn’t have one.
There recently was even some discussion here of also merging BC releases without barcode, on the assumption that the barcode is merely missing information and no intentional difference. But I wouldn’t go as far.
I mostly split them because of the different relationships needed for each release (mostly the presence or lack of a distributor), and we do similar for physical releases with subtle differences, like different pressing plants or glass masters…
that said, if you aren’t gonna worry about adding distributors, it’s prolly okay to not worry about creating multiple releases, I typically do tho, lol