I’m asking if anyone likes this idea or not. I know a lot of people have a problem with all the different countries added on releases that aren’t truly worldwide. I get that. I still would like to retain that aspect. It’s the dates that I think makes it the ugliest. First off, it’s almost impossible to truly know when a release was released in each country. For example there were 50 something new countries added to Apple Music back in April & 20 something more added to Spotify back in July. I went as far as creating a Word File that has the dates of each country that streaming services first appeared. However, even this really isn’t accurate at all because there are other streaming services besides iTunes, Spotify & Deezer. I think that digital releases should only have 1 date on them. This way it would alleviate all the doubt. We don’t need to really know when a release first became available in each country. We could just show that date, followed by the list of countries. Add a blank country first with the date. Then just list all the countries after that without a date. So, it’d look something like this:
2020-09-20
Canada
France
Mexico
United Kingdom
United States
The repetition of the exact same date on all the releases when most of them aren’t even correct would end. Of course, with a-tisket becoming so popular that need to be reconfigured, to help out.
Personally, I find 120 countries on a release silly. But that’s just me and doesn*t help you Trying to divide the internet into local parts is a futile endeavour… I would deactivate country for digital releases.
That would not work at all. Many, many releases are only available in different regions. They are not all Worldwide. The data is important. It’s the presentation that could use some fixing.
I mean officially. Obviously I can use a VPN to access releases almost anywhere. But many services have region restrictions that are given to them by the different labels.
MusicBrainz release country has always been about intended region, even for CDs. Anyone can export a CD from one country to another, but we don’t say a Japan CD’s release country is the United States just because a Kinokuniya bookstore imports it from Japan.
Maybe, but it won’t help you bypass payment method restrictions like credit card BIN allow/block list, mandatory SMS verification requiring a local phone number, etc.
Since iTunes, Spotify, Deezer, etc. can probably change the regions at any time for whatever reason, I think of how we treat bootlegs - we shouldn’t add them if changes can or will be made.
We need a special purpose [digital] release location and just leave it at that.
I find the long list of countries for digital releases very annoying. Wouldn’t it make sense for example to be able to mark a Spotify release as “worldwide where Spotify is available”? That way you don’t have to deal with a long list of countries + you wouldn’t necessarily be claiming that it is fully worldwide when there might some exception(s) to where that service is available.
They already are marked Worldwide if they are Worldwide where Spotify is available, if they are only Spotify releases. The list are collapsible. It’s not nearly as bad as it use to be when they weren’t. They do need to fix the “existing release” tab when adding a new release though if you use that. They use to talk about a new layout, but I haven’t heard anything in regards to that in a couple of years. I think the data is important. I just really don’t see how repeating the date is of any use.
Unfortunally, no. There are no guidelines on Digital releases, which is why we’re having this debate. Using a-tisket will automatically set releases that are on every country available for a service defaults to Worldwide. You don’t have to go Worldwide with it, but most probably won’t have a problem with it.
Trying to divide the internet into local parts is a futile endeavour… I would deactivate country for digital releases.