Release events & Brexit: United Kingdom no longer part of Europe?

As a result of my question, I found this example release:

where you can find 2 release events:
image

As far as I know “United Kingdom” is only politically no more part of the European Union, but geographically still part of Europe.

What it is the reason why there should be two release events for the same day in this two “geographical zones”?

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For this specific album I would actually remove EU. As the label is firmly grounded in the UK. Even if they ship or distro throughout the EU/worldwide I find it more helpful to be country-specific.

As to your question that I assume this release is just meant to illustrate, UK would be redundant, I agree.

There are a few cases where I would dig deeper. e.g. if a label usually had a different release date for UK and then EU, and so always got two release events, then I would add both events even if they were the same. For consistency and to illustrate that the data is known. That’s stretching for a scenario obviously, just wanted to point out that there may be edge cases where I would have both.

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This Release is correct and I would leave it alone.

Geography: UK is still in Europe. UK only left the small club call the EU. EU is only half of Europe.

EU does not exist in MB. It is not an entity that MB bothers with.

You will often find Release that are listed as Europe, UK, Germany, Italy, etc.

Europe is too big and a kinda fictional thing in MB terms. So it is common to have a “Europe” release when you only know a vague area of the release. But those of us in the specific countries will list known release dates for the separate countries.

This example says “It was released in the UK but also available in other parts of Europe”.

Also please stop saying “EU” when you mean “Europe” as these are very different places.

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Shouldn’t it have [worldwide] then? Their store ships worldwide, not just to Europe.

(both seem pointless to me tbh, the country field is just to identify and disambiguate releases, not to list where they post/distro to)

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I don’t think there is. Probably I would choose ‘Europe’ for this one (unless there is a rights society MCPS or a specific distribution note for the UK). A Danish (Faroese) artist releasing on a British label… at least meant to be marketed in Denmark.

But I usually don’t change release countries, except if entirely wrong.

How do you know? Only because of the label?

That’s an increasing problem for the concept of a release country. Nowadays the primary market is the world-wide-web. Every label will ship their products to wherever you are. But at least for physical items it’s still useful for disambiguation (you mentioned that).

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(I should learn to bookmark these threads as they always reappear every couple of years. My replies are from learnt knowledge and not my opinion of the defintions )

Look at the digital releases and their huge lists of countries. It is rare that Worldwide is allowed even there. Digital is about where a shop sells to. Physical is where the record label are shipping to directly. Where the band announced it was to be available. A European CD is not going to be sent to the USA due to different distribution agreements. There would be a different USA production line (or now this is often done with replacement artwork)

Not just label, but because of industry papers where you can find the details. Also memory at the time of the CD release. I had an interesting conversation with an old hand in the edit notes once. I pulled them up for adding Germany to all their CDs. It was the same as above - Europe + Germany. They explained it was a Release country and it was known that a release was made there on that date. Especially because they bought it at that time from that place.

Europe is a daft term really. I have 1990 CDs that are marked as “Europe” when half of the continent was still fenced off. It is a bizarre term as it is a vague as “Worldwide”.

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We should probably not count shipping options for MB release country field, only street shop availability, and not considering their import shelves. :roll_eyes::sweat_smile:

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@ernstlx - a little secret to share: https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Music-Week/1995/Music-Week-1995-06-03.pdf

That magazine lets Record Stores know what to stock. Notice pages 50 and 52 in that example with release dates.

You can find searchable magazines like UK Music Week online on websites like https://worldradiohistory.com (Yes - OCR searchable)

I also find magazines like this fascinating as just a snapshot of history. The bands they thought would go big, the bands they didn’t notice.

But this can make a point that these records were released in the UK on this date. Not imported from Europe - but directly released and marketed here.

There will be similar magazines for Germany, France, etc which would be great to find.

Modern releases are trickier as we now live in such a small world. Shipping is so simple. But an artist will always focus on one market first. I hope for physical media we can still focus on data like this. We have lost if for Digital now as the focus is only on where a shop sells, but an artist like Eivør will have markets she focuses on. She will have printed a set number of CDs and sent them to the UK for sale. This we should still take note of.

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That is not true - I add mainly Bandcamp releases and they are always worldwide. Even the storefronts that region-lock often release worldwide.

I have provided a link to their store where they list shipping worldwide.

Can you provide evidence of a different distribution agreement or a different production line for this release in the USA?

Any evidence at all that they have announced something for Europe specifically.

It’s very unlikely that Eivør does any printing or sends anything. The label usually handles everything (in this case a UK electronic label).

Bandcamp is not always Worldwide, especially on releases that are not worldwide on Apple Music, etc… They introduced geo restrictions a few years ago.
Territory licensing comes to Bandcamp – Bandcamp Updates

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Ah, thanks tigerman.

My point was more that if you are counting everywhere that a shop “ships to directly” as a release location then modern non-worldwide releases become quite rare indeed.

Cool. It is almost always still Worldwide, especially for indie artists. I see editors say Worldwide on CDs when directly ordered from a shop that says they will ship worldwide. I really get annoyed seeing Worldwide CDs for some reason. It seems many just now act as if you can buy it on a site than it’s Worldwide. No idea why so many editors are adding worldwide to physical releases. As far as the topic at hand, to me, the UK is part of Europe. I never add individual countries if they came out on the same date, but I understand why some do and I try not to remove them any longer like I used too.

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