An album was digitally released, exclusively on SoundCloud. A hacker got into the artist’s account and deleted it from the platform, but bootlegs still exist elsewhere online, e.g. on YouTube. The artist has never bothered to put the album back on SoundCloud.
When adding the release, do you mark it Official or Withdrawn?
I’d say withdrawn. Seems that’s what is happening on all digital media that is no longer on any platforms unless it was cancelled before release date.
if I were entering it, I’d probably say official, since it (apparently) wasn’t actually removed by the artist or label, but I don’t see any issue with withdrawn either.
I don’t think it was withdrawn, I think it ‘naturally’ went out of circulation (since the artist themselves didn’t actually remove it).
Interesting story! Either way I would add it to the annotation 
What @aerozol says. This is like a CD that just sells out. The artist never withdrew it… it just stopped being available.
I’ve been wondering about that. So, old iTunes, etc that are no longer available aren’t “withdrawn”? So, it really only is for if there is a reason for it (maybe controversial artwork or track?) and not just that they came out with a newer release?
“Withdrawn” means “we intentionally took it down” - it can be because the artist is embarrassed of it by now, or because they consider it doesn’t represent them anymore, or because they just wanted to re-release it under a new artist name. “It’s just gone with no statement from the artist about why” I wouldn’t automatically equal with “Withdrawn”, since it might not even be intentional (or it might have been intentional from the get-go, for example if something was always meant to be sold for 6 months only to create some degree of “scarcity” and it got taken down after 6 months or something).
This is the same as when a CD or Vinyl record is no longer manufactured… or books are ‘out of print’.They are not withdrawn.