Shared bootleg recordings as file set: Album or Other?

MusicBrainz
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After a different discussion, I started entering bootleg recordings that were not “released” in the traditional sense but shared (trade, torrent sites), which can also be seen as a release.

At first I used Album as the main type. Then I was thinking that “album” might imply something official, so I switched to using Other. Live recordings can be very short or long. Since several years fewer and fewer people burn to CD, especially with the higher than 16/44 files. So “album” just felt wrong.

Also, if a list of audience recored bootlegs end up under the Album+Live section, they will be among the official live recordings. A bootleg of an official album is something different than a bootleg that has a live recording that was never officially released, even though many bands allow audience recordings to be made, so maybe the word bootleg is not entirely correct?

But since this was just my thought/opinion, I thought it was best to ask the community. Is a tape (or file set) of an audience recording an album or should those be Other?

What do other people think?

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I think I’ve seen unofficial live releases entered as both Album and as Other, but all three of the examples at Style / Specific types of releases / Live bootlegs - MusicBrainz are Album+Live, so I’d say the official guidance is to do that (as long as it’s a recording of the full show…?).

You shouldn’t need to worry about any of these appearing to be official as long as all of the releases have the “Bootleg” status. The release groups won’t be included in the artist’s default “official” discography (as long as there are other release groups with official releases, IIRC) – people will only see them if they visit the ?all=1 page.

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Good to know, thanks. I’ll change my additions to Album+Live (with Bootleg of course)

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