I thought I had read that some tours (2003 / 2004) they did get them pressed on the same day? but I can’t remember now where I read this so ignore that thought until I find the reference for that quote again.
I’ll take your “I was there” knowledge as more accurate.
With these Peter Gabriel releases it gets easier to set “UK” to them all as they are all coming from the same source of the website.
One thing to watch out for on some popular releases is when multiple re-pressings start to happen, and then different distribution deals occur in different countries. This then appears as small differences in the copyright details on the rear covers. I had a funny example that I bought new in the UK from UK Amazon and unexpectedly received an Argentine issue. I guess due to Amazon and its Worldwide warehouses ( https://musicbrainz.org/release/0f9da849-2a36-4011-8cb4-b02a2c2cd0a2 )
The 2003/4 tours had no additional 96kHz download and physical CDs have to be manufactured first. Furthermore these were really big events with more than 10.000 people. After the show it wouldn’t be possible to sell anything while the masses leave the venue.
In the past I’ve bought lots of imports from my favorite record store (in Vienna), but these records were clearly marked as imports. And of course, they were more expensive.
Today I buy directly from the artist’s web shop, but it’s still the same. Now I do the import by myself and I have to pay the higher price the further away the CDs are shipped from.
So I think, they are released where they manufactured… or held on stock?
I agree. I checked some of my latest CDs. The origin of the label is always in the country where they were shipped from*. In one case I thought, it would be different, but I was wrong. It’s an Austrian band releasing on a British label and it was in fact shipped from the UK!
The release group in MB is interesting: Rocco
The Digital Media is XW.
The CD is GB. (label location!)
The Vinyl release has XE in addition. The physical media are available on regional European Amazon sites as well. It’s possible that it’s the same as the local release. But it’s hard to verify as I don’t like to buy the same album once again.
*) except one: UK label, shipped from Switzerland.
Not released where manufactured. I have many UK releases that were Made in France but never released in France.
Think of the Artist talking to the Label about finding “cheaper manufacturing” and then going to that location to get the disks.
One of the Bands I am thinking of is the Levellers. They are based in Brighton, UK and their very first releases were printed in France. This is technically closer to them than the UK pressing plant in Swindon, UK. They probably nipped over on the Newhaven ferry in a battered old Ford Transit to pick up the disks. They certainly would not have had any fancy European distribution deal in those early days. Just some CDs to sell at the gigs and local record stores.
There can be many reasons to manufacture in a different location to the actual band and\or label.
Your Austrian band example sounds similar. They realised they could get cheaper disks printed in the UK. Or their UK label already had a deal with a UK pressing plant.
I would expect the actual release was originally Austria for all media… but this has expanded as people purchased their release in different parts of Europe. We may then find out that the label did distribute across Europe.
This can often be hard to work out exactly. So a vague “Europe” often appears if more than one European country is involved.
We need to try and imagine the marketing team for the Label standing up on behalf of the Artist and making an announcement in local newspapers saying “Come buy this album.” That is the Release event we are looking for. Where did those first copies appear? And if they also shipped some to Germany and France in that same week then that gives you German and French release dates.
If an independent record store imported the disks themselves, then that is not a “release”. That is just a shop getting music for their clients.
This destroys my thesis: “British label, “made in the UK”, was shipped from the UK. So it’s release country GB.”
CDs are available on all Amazon platforms too, but naturally I know nothing about this releases.
(HVOB is not that small act, they toured and released together with Winston Marshall of Mumford & Sons)
But it would not be helpful at all if it would be an Austrian release. No one purchasing the CD would know that, and in the end that’s what it is about. To distinguish between different releases.
Yeah, marketing people can be tricky to pin down, but you can usually rely on what you are seeing on the back of a physical CD. So that would usually be a GB release. Though often expands to a Europe release.
It gets more confusing in the 1990s when you had UK bands, printing CDs in EMI UDEN, Netherlands, and then releasing in the UK, but sometimes that release may also be in other parts of Europe. Impossible to tell from the CD in hand. So I’d start with the market I know about for sure.
This is why you also sometimes see a UK Band, with a UDEN printed CD, with a FRANCE release date as that is the only detail the uploader knew for sure.
The bigger the band, the more editions then get released and printed or reprinted. Go look at stuff like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Or U2’s early albums. Or the Hendrix I pointed out above. There are usually separate distribution deals for different territories. Especially Europe vs USA releases. This appears as small difference in the rear copyrights. This now happens less as it is so cheap\simple to ship disks around the planet now. And many artists like Peter Gabriel are taking control of their own releases.
In many cases Amazon make it clearer on their site that CDs are “import” when selling a US disk in the UK. Though this isn’t for certain as marketplace re-sellers can also list second hand disks at Amazon and they don’t really care about the source.
The Austrian example you are picking on is an interesting one. Maybe have a look at the charts in a few other countries. Or find an old press releases. See if there is any mention of sales outside of Austria in those first weeks. Or where they were touring in that year the album came out. All can be hints as to the initial release market.
Personally I’d have stuck to Austria. Unlike the weird tangent Digital Music has gone down, the physical media is more about where it was released from. Not who it can be sold to. (I am trying to avoid going into that weird Digital Music craze for naming every store Deezer may have. That doesn’t make sense to me.)
I do not trust Amazon information in general and I only tried to indicate that HVOB isn’t a good example for a local band.
Personally I won’t. GB wasn’t set by me and I would keep it. I took a closer look at the regional Amazon offers:
Only on amazon.de (=amazon.at) it’s sold and shipped directly by Amazon. Other Amazon sites have only 3rd party offers. But it’s interesting where you would get them from: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B07KZKCY8C
Of course that’s not of any relevance concerning my “UK import”.
That’s interesting too. They charted in several European countries, though probably mainly because of downloads and streaming.
Nah that’s because those editions are cheaper (even if usually they’re not allowed to be distributed outside of Argentina). Years ago when I bought the Genesis back catalogue off Amazon, most of those were Argentinian editions.
That makes sense. Amazon being cheap and ignoring distribution deals - just seems funny have a UK BBFC logo on it for the DVD. Is that also used world wide then? I would have expected something more South American certifying the age.
Just set it to Europe then. It sounds like they probably shipped out to other European stores. I don’t know how Austrian artists promote themselves.
Certainly would ignore the Amazon stores. Just because a German Amazon store sold a copy doesn’t mean much from a distribution side. I’d be more likely to find a truly German record store and look there. In the UK I’d be more interested to know if you could walk into HMV or VirginMegastores and buy it on the highstreet. That would be a Release. Look at my Hendrix example to see how Amazon will get anything from anywhere and ship it to you. That is a salesman doing the work, and not a record label’s choice.
European is probably the best choice (although I don’t know if Amazon/other stores sell the same release)
I don’t know either, but as they charted in other countries as well … they did well.
As there is no separate Austrian Amazon it means distribution in Austria (for this album). There are other Austrian stores listing them as well. (no further German stores)
Those record stores left offer mainstream only (except some genre specific shops).
There might be a chance with HVOB. Maybe I have a look (with the barcode scanner).
It is the funny side effect of working on a website like this. We end up learning so many other strange related facts about our favourite music and artists.
Probably
I will never again hit the Enter button early! It starts the upload of queued images and there’s no way to abort.
I was going to add types and some comments and pressed Enter instead of the Plus key. Although the Remove button looks still functional, all images were uploaded without type and comment (had to be added one by one).
Hi,
back with release countries:
I edited once more Peter Gabriel Encore Series and I’m still not sure what release country to choose for them…
… and that’s exactly the problem I’m struggling with. Currently there are all possible interpretations present:
Latin American Tour: release country set to country of location and one release has an Annotation* that the releases were “promoted” before and after the show. Probably not sold though.
The Warm Up Tour shows are inconsistently tagged: GB for an Italian show, none, worldwide (added by me)
I really don’t know what to do.
Might be country of the location: It’s not impossible that the releases were ordered and paid before or after the show. So it would have been originally released there.
Or worldwide.
Don’t think GB. This would exclude the country of the event and that’s probably where most of the copies have gone to.
So what will be best?
*) Google translation: Live album of the concert given on March 31, 2009 in Monterrey (Mexico).
The album is a semi-official album, published by The music.com, under the name Encore series, with the full approval of Peter Gabriel, who even promoted it before and after the concert. This allowed fans to be able to relive the concert as it had lived.
At the technical level, the sound was recorded at the console output, and not reworked in the studio. The sound quality is therefore excellent and identical to the sound transmitted to concert power amps.
Is there anything on the back of the covers about Copyright? Or a Distributor? Where have they been physically made and packaged? That may help give a clue.
Personally I still say it is the GB based Peter selling these from his GB based company and GB hosted website. He packages these up in GB and posts them into a GB post box for distribution world wide.
Others will argue that as he will post to anywhere Worldwide then it becomes Worldwide release. But that would also mean that anything Amazon sells becomes a Worldwide release.
Concerning manufacturing - I found out, that themusic.com offers Encore Series releases with a similar layout (“bootleg feeling”) for The Who too. The Who are no Realworld customers. But I wasn’t able to find out, where they are located (no publishing information on the website and “themusic.com” is no good keyword for a Google search).
Being distributed FROM the UK does not stop it being sold TO any country.
RealWorld has a Wiltshire address - so that is GB.
themusic.com is a bit dodgy as a website as there is no address on the contact page. Prices in dollars, domain registered in US. So likely a US store - but I would not use US as the country. That is like saying Amazon is US based so everything it sells is US.
Correct, manufacturing is not “release country”. But it was part of putting together a picture of where these came from.
Where was the first announcement for these being available? If it was a website that sells Worldwide, then you are closer to a Worldwide release.
Toss a coin - GB or Worldwide? Otherwise you are heading into the rule of “If in doubt, leave it out”.
