@aerozol put together a blog post for people who don’t follow the forum, but maybe it’s also useful for people who just noticed this at the end of the discussion anyway:
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So are compilations like this that keep disappearing from Deezer/Spotify good candidates for “withdrawn”?
Generally speaking, yes I think so, based on the guidelines.
In this exact case, probably not, because that release seems to still be available on other platforms (harmony link)
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Good to know, thanks. Interesting, the Spotify release is disabled as well but I can’t say about Tidal.
Aren’t those just like temporary generated genre based playlists?
Like Best Sad Songs, or Greatest Rock Anthems?
I would not import them in MB, at all, in the first place. 
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As far as I can tell they’re real releases, though certainly low quality. But someone imported them and I don’t think there’s a case for removing them.
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There was disagreement over whether Edit #117372233 - MusicBrainz is Expunged or not, though it seems the consensus now is that it’s not. (My understanding is that it requires the artist/label to confirm that something that can’t be found anymore is more than sold out / out of print / contract expired / label would rather sell you newer music.)
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Playlist don’t get issued barcodes. Another quick way to know if a digital release is a release is whether or not not it can be imported by harmony or atisket. They can’t import playlists.
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So, are all the various artist compilations put out by X5, FP, etc. “withdrawn” once they are no longer available on any streaming service? Or should we just keep them as official?
You can set them to “Withdrawn”, if you like:
“The guidelines have been aligned so that the withdrawn status reflects its common usage – it can now be used where an artist or label withdrew or updated a online release, but did not explicitly intend to “disown” the release.”
Withdrawn is unlikely to ever be hidden from the default view (IMO) so it’s not as big a deal as setting it to one of the other non-official types/it does not imply the release is not ‘official’ for discography purposes.
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Was I wrong in understanding this. I’m still confused or editors are still confused. See, http://musicbrainz.org/edit/122215297
I thought that once a digital release is not available any longer than it was withdrawn. At least since expunged became available.
But this release seems to be more like a limited edition: “Track 18 is a pre-order only bonus track” ← It was therefore clear from the beginning that with the album release, this version would no longer be available. Therefore, I don’t think it was actively withdrawn.
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Okay. That’s why I was asking. That’s how I thought it was before, but I thought that since they came up with “expunged” that it changed to basically mean anything that was no longer available in that form. I definitely can see that maybe a pre-order release that still is the same barcode, etc as it is today, might not be withdrawn.
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To continue this more recent thread about “withdrawn” releases… I am still a little wobbly about using this status.
Is this release now “Withdrawn”?
It was silently replaced by a version with 2 tracks less and a different order.
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Looks like “withdrawn” to me, as per the current, more lenient, definition.
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