From the guideline proposal itself:
This makes sense to me, but we should probably also specify more clearly then that intentional separate releases should be kept separate. I get that most often they involve different labels, but this might not be obvious since we only have (P) and (C) credits in several stores. Sometimes this also involves different track titles (Latin vs non-Latin) which is also different releases, but might be worth clarifying?
Does this mean different main labels, or also different distributors and whatnot?
I generally agree with this idea, but we should probably also specify that in cases where some countries are explicitly separated (such as if there’s a release in one region and one rest of the world release), the countries should be listed.
Other comments:
I think I agree with this view.
Agreed - I wouldn’t be surprised if some albums were released in two versions, cheaper without a PDF and more expensive with one, tbh. But in any case, I’d certainly call a physical release different if it came with vs without a booklet and I’m not convinced this is not the case for digital, so I’d suggest skipping this entirely for now and seeing what common sense leads us to.
The release date guidance should be relatively easy: “The date the release was added to the first of the digital platforms it’s available in”. You could specify that often the date is not given or is replaced by the release date of a physical version of the release, so in case of doubt it’s better to not enter a date at all unless there’s certainty it’s the date for this specific digital release.
One thing I’m missing here is evolving releases (I’d want to specify that a release that has tracks added to it should be entered as a new, second release rather than edited).