just going through the metal releases of 2023 and I came upon this one here.
there are two different bandcamp pages for this one. one from the band itself and from the label, they both have the same barcode and track listing. but the cover art is slighlty different. I’m wondering if one should add another release because of this.
I guess I’m just asking whether to follow the rule to the letter or not.
If you look at the border of the cover, the positioning of the band logo and the shadows of the album title - it is more than just color difference. but still very much the same.
I’d create a seperate release for this, partly because of the artwork, but mostly because the self-released one should probably have the [no label] label, being self-released
I wonder if, for the digital download version, the band’s own BC page uses an early version of the cover art that was later revised to increase the black border’s width for a final version. The physical releases on CD and vinyl seem to consistently use the version with the thicker black border, as far as I can tell from the few pictures I find of actual physical product photos. This is just guessing on my part, but the cover artwork on the label’s BC page for the release corresponds to the CD/vinyl cover art - as @chaban said, asking would be best.
If asking yields no answer, @jesus2099’s suggestion to keep the digital downloads as one release sounds reasonable, considering just the slightly different cover art.
In reply to @UltimateRiff’s “no label” comment: the release notes on the band’s BC page read “Released by Peaceville Records on CD/LP/Cassette/Digital Formats”. Not sure if that would really be self-released in a strict sense?
Differing labels responsible for the release. Note that online services are often inconsistent or unreliable in how they credit labels, so only split these if you’re sure.
perhaps the [no label] part is a bit much, but I still think the different cover art (whether intentional or not) should probably have a seperate release. if it’s unintentional, it’s kinda the same thing as a misprint in the physical world
not required, but I feel like a seperate release isn’t a bad idea in the case of a misprint. I think the collectors market for misprints is large enough to support this (not that people are collecting digital media the same way)
either way, I think this difference is enough to make a new release over
I’d vote to just upload both variations of the art to a single Release. Add a comment to the images as to the source of each. The intent does not seem to have two versions, just someone less observant picked up the wrong image at the label.
thanks for all the responses. I forget to add to my initial post that this is probably not the case of a self-released vs label one. but I see this was already mentioned by @Nadim and @chaban.
I think I already saw some of these cases where the cover art of the artist bandcamp page seems to be the raw image while the one of the label was further refined. in these cases however the release separation was already justified by label difference. so this question never came up so far for me.
If you find the cover art differences interesting and want to store them, you can create two releases. If you don’t care so much you can create one release.
I decided to add the cover to the existing release. I wanna see it as the same entity because of the label and barcode match and the covers are very similar. I don’t know if this would be even enough reason to add another release if these were physical releases (when all the other data match).
Estonian band Cartoon earlier this year had one of their founding members depart. On digital vendors, all of Cartoon’s prior work has been ‘updated’ to separately credit this ex-member who goes by the moniker Jéja. Moreover (and here’s the reason why I’m posting this here) the cover-art of their older releases has been revised to reflect this change in artist credits (Cartoon being replaced by Cartoon x Jéja on images).
Going further down the rabbit hole, I learnt that the GTIN has been kept from the original releases even after the aforementioned changes (no new UPC/Barcode). Each digital vendor handled these changes differently. On one hand, Apple Music kept the old links, only updating the credits and cover-art. On the other hand Spotify added new links with the updated credits and artwork, while keeping the old ones hidden from searches. Harmony on the old Spotify link Harmony on the new Spotify link Snapshot of the Apple Music link on Wayback Machine before the revision
It’s no surprise that digital releases are prone to such revisions. Not to mention that vendors (mostly Spotify) often give primary artist credit to as many involved people possible (remixers, producers) for the sake of royalties, the algorithm, etc. and doing the same on MB is clearly discouraged. Therefore, I would have voted no on the aforementioned edits, however these revisions have gone further than that.
For practical reasons (let users tag with the version/cover they have or want) and also because I think this kind of band history is very interesting for us to be able to see in a release group.
100% new releases, yes - an artist name change means a new release, and probably the old ones being marked as “withdrawn” and as “replaced by” the new ones.
