Should Twitter-only releases be marked as a release or a recording?

MusicBrainz Style
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To be more specific, 稲葉曇 (inabakumori) posted a song called “SATURDAY SUNSET” as a video onto Twitter. This song does not appear on any streaming services and only officially exists on Twitter.

A while back I uploaded this song to the database as a bootleg release. (Release in question) Now I am unsure if it counts as a bootleg or a recording. What should I do for this release (and possible others in the future)?

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good question!

don’t take my word as gospel or anything because i haven’t been here very long. but personally for me it depends on a lot of things: the tweet in question, the artist, the rest of their discography, whether it was to tease a new album, etc. i don’t know any of these things about this situation so i’d say it’s up to you as someone who follows them.

for me, my thought process goes

  • if it’s someone that primarily releases music “professionally”, with a marketing team or something → recording
  • if it’s someone that primarily releases music on physical media → recording
  • if it’s someone independent that primarily releases music on streaming services (apple, spotify, itunes, etc) → promotional single
  • if it’s someone that primarily releases music on soundcloud and bandcamp → maybe promotional single, maybe official single, i go with my gut and the contents of the tweet
  • if it’s someone that primarily releases music in weird ways (google drive, posting directly on their website, tumblr, sending random people zip files on discord) → official single

in short, if releasing music as online posts is their norm i would say a release, if it’s not i would say a recording

i think bootleg is the wrong move, if you feel it was not qualified to be an official release i would enter it as promotional :slight_smile:

again i don’t know if this is right or not lol i’m not anyone with any sort of authority here. just my thoughts.

i should also mention that honestly i hate standalone recordings. when in doubt i go “single + promotion”

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Thanks for the help!! I ended up changing it to a promotional single :slight_smile:

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