I have some releases from the Dutch ‘Dance Classics’ series and the re-release series from 2000 seems to be a bit of a mess on Musicbrainz (and Discogs). I wanted to clean it up, but I’m not sure about something. A very short recap: the series is originally from 1988 and had 16 main volumes. In 2000, the series got a ‘remastered’ re-release. Not only was it remastered, the songs were also longer in some cases, and a few songs were swapped (probably due to licensing) here and there. These re-releases however, were bundled and sold in sets of 2: 2 jewelcases together in a slipcase.
Now here’s the confusing part: for some re-releases, Musicbrainz has a release-group for the re-release 2-pack and for some entries Musicbrainz does not have a release for the two-pack rerelease but instead bundled the separate jewelcases under the original 1988 releases. And for some, there’s both. If that sentence makes sense to you: congratulations haha.
Here’s a concrete example: this is the release-group containing the 2000 rerelease containing volume 1 & 2: https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/59b215d4-22ec-40f5-b136-3139319b1668 That seems all fine. This is the release-group of the original 1988 Volume 1: https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/9af0814e-b0ac-3865-86de-2808c83830ec but it also contains the 2000 jewelcase from the re-release Volume 1 + 2. As far as I can find; it was never sold separately. And there are more such weird cases for the rest of the series up to 16.
So my question is: should this entry https://musicbrainz.org/release/a893aad0-55aa-4edd-8f34-35102260d605 be removed, as it was not sold separately and only as part of the 2-pack?
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I’m no classical expert, but that should have been a single Release with four CDs. If you bought it together, then it is a single Release. Even if it is also available separate. It is not unusual to see separate Catalogue numbers on the CDs in a box set.
You should merge those four releases into a single Release and set them as CD1, CD2, CD3, CD4. You can list multiple catalogue numbers, but just use the single barcode of the outer package.
You can also use the Annotation field to explain the different cat nos \ barcodes.
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Cool, thanks for the reply. A slight clarification: the 1988 releases contain a single CD and the 2000 re-releases thus contain 2 cds (volumes) per release, not 4. But I get what you mean 
I think what makes this a bit confusing is that some of discs included in the 2000 2-packs contain essentially the same tracks (thought sometimes with different lengths) as their 1988 counterparts, which might’ve confused some people that don’t have the original slipcase anymore into thinking it was the same as the original release.
I’ll go and remove all single-cd 2000 releases then, since all 2-pack entries seem to already exist already.
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This does get confusing, but there is some logic once you get your head round it.
A Release Group is for collecting together different issues of the same CD. Different countries, and different reissues over the years.
If the CD initially was a single CD and later had extra tracks added as a second CD, then it would share Release Groups.
BUT if that later CD is really two separate releases repackaged then it would be a new Release Group and set as a Compilation. So if the 2000 releases are two 1988 CD packaged together, then they are seen as a Compilation Release.
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If you can merge instead of deleting that would be ideal, then existing links and tags don’t get broken.
Great work btw, sounds like one of those satisfying cleanups!
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