Hello all,
Some artists that I follow release songs only available to Patreon patrons. How would one enter these into the database? For reference, most of the tracks are singles, so I would be inclined to add them to singles. The thing is, I feel like they aren’t “official” releases in the same sense as other releases. Anyway, if you need more information let me know, just trying to understand how to do this. Thanks!
Maybe they could be marked as promotion?
It’s slightly like releases that can be bought only by fanclub members.
I’m interested in knowing how to treat these (currently most of them are marked as official).
In any cases, a short annotation or comment would be great, at least.
I have uploaded a lot here as ‘promotional’:
For the moment, the ones I was thinking about are still all official.
And I’m not sure I would put them as promotional (for me promotional is mostly given out stuff, not sold), and their official homepages usually mention these editions like this or that (they are all officially listed for these artists, for instance).
Could you say these are a kind of “limited edition” official release?
I’ve seen usually seen fanclub discs set to “promotional”, but on other artists I seen them appear as “official”. I stuck to calling the “promotional” when adding them (due to some old long lost debate).
They are in a limbo really. Not “official” enough to count on the charts, but not “promo” enough to be given away.
I have seen “promo” get slapped on anything that isn’t really fully official. Example being a cover mounted CD on a magazine. They get a “promo” tag even though they are part of the official release of the magazine.
I think it’s right because the CD is offered for promotion, under some conditions: that you buy the magazine.
It’s like some promotional CD I got for free when buying stuff in a CD shop.
But most typical promotional CD are those sent out by labels to radios and to journalists, in the hope of air play and published reviews, usually cardboard sleeve versions.
And there are the demos from the artists to the labels, they might be promotion in MB too, I guess.
official
Any release officially sanctioned by the artist and/or their record company. Most releases will fit into this category.promotional
A give-away release or a release intended to promote an upcoming official release (e.g. pre-release versions, releases included with a magazine, versions supplied to radio DJs for air-play).
A promotional release needs to “promote an upcoming official release”. In general, if you have to buy it, it’s not promotional (it’s not a give-away then). (Obviously this doesn’t include third-party sales/auctions.)
Music enclosed in another product that you buy is still official, not promotional, if the purpose isn’t to get you to buy an upcoming release of the same music, because you didn’t receive it for free. In the cases I can think of, when a magazine, game software, or DVD/Blu-Ray video encloses an audio CD, the purpose is to get you to buy that magazine/game/video, as the audio on the CD is not promoting an “upcoming official (audio) release”, and is often the only way you can obtain those tracks.
In my example the Patreon releases are almost always called ‘previews’ or ‘early access’. I think we can assess artist intent with these releases just like any other.
It just so happens that in my (experience) Patreon users will often get something before what the artist considers the ‘official’ release date. Others may be simply releasing music through Patreon as a standard method of purchase, for sure.
To be clear, the releases that I am familiar with on Patreon from the artists I know are songs that have only been released there and are not really promoting any other releases. They are made specifically for the Patreon members as a perk and are usually not released in any other capacity.