Not sure if CD & Digital Media entries should be merged

The FAQ on merging says to do so only if the “country, label, barcode, format, and packaging, are the same”. I found an existing occurrence of Lolita Nation by Game Theory, but it was entered with a format of “Digital Media”, and has a slightly different catalog# than the CD I’ve bought, but otherwise they match. I entered the CD separately, but now suspect maybe they should be merged. The 2 relevant URLs are http://musicbrainz.org/release-group/825a47de-8e5f-3938-be48-77c9080457e3 and http://musicbrainz.org/release-group/bcb7d738-48a2-412c-b5fc-1ba886390381 . Opinions, please.

No, CDs and Digital Media releases (and Vinyl, etc.) should remain separate. Just as the part about format and packaging says.

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Gotcha. A related question: the first of those 2 links groups the 1987 CD, the 2016 vinyl (misentered as 2015), and the 2016 digital media. Are they grouped because they were inappropriately merged? If they’re fine the way they are, why isn’t the 2016 CD I entered also under the same group, instead of isolated? (Something I muffed?)

Those two release groups should be merged. Reissues should be in the same release group as the original release.

Those are grouped because they’re part of the same release group - that includes all releases, formats, remasters, etc of an album. So yes, yours should be in the same group. You probably made a new release group by accident. I think the best thing to do is merge them now (see the “merge” link in the right hand column).

Edit: oops, timing…

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You can read some more about Release Groups here:
https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Release_Group
:slight_smile:

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