Unichappell Music (publisher)

MusicBrainz
1

Does anyone know of reasons why these should be separate?

Unichappell Music, Inc.
Unichappell Music Co.
Unichappell Music
Unichappel Music

The last one seems to be a holder for typos. The first three all link to separate discogs entries, but those are interlinked with “please consider also…” links which seem to indicate these are just different ways Unichappell gets billed.

It seems to me like these could all be merged into one entry with several aliases.

2

My impulse is to call for the merging of the lot.
But.
The benefits of having them separated:
hmmmm, um

  1. The different spellings and punctuations parallel the differences between Releases in a RG?
  2. The differences are historically important to some-one?
  3. By having the different forms we make it less likely that someone in the future will start separate entities?

Other’s ideas?

The only one that concerns is me more than very slightly is 2.
Though my experiences of other databases (not naming names here) in somewhat similar situations is that even if there were some original underlying criteria it has possibly been diluted away with random additions. Unless there happens to be a dedicated Unichapell curator on Discogs?

1 Like
3

You could try and contact the editor that created them and ask them if they can be merged.
Go to the original edit and leave a note asking if they can be merged or if there is a reason to keep them separate.

4

I’d leave UnichappelMusic, Inc., Unichappell Music Co. & Unichappell Music all separate, and merge Unichapel Music into Unichappell Music.
Universal Music Co. & Universal Music Inc. are different types of companies legally. My opinion is on publishers it’s good to not merge them all together unless it’s just a typo, etc.

1 Like
5

According to that link, though, “Co.” doesn’t actually have legal significance. If there was a “Unichappell Music Ltd.” or “Unichappell Music GMBH” I would agree with your point.

A search on the BMI website for “Unichappell” returns a bunch of entries for “UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC” (all with the same ID) as well as a “UNICHAPPELL GARVARENTZ” and “UNICHAPPELL PETER PIPER” with different IDs (but no works in their catalogs).

There are only a few works associated with either Unichappell Music or Unichappell Music Co. in MB today, and some of them aren’t even listed in BMI as being published by Unichappell any more, but One Big Sky is listed in MB under Unichappell Music but in BMI under Unichappell Music, Inc.

So if we leave them separate, when do I use Unichappell Music vs Unichappell Music, Inc. ? Only use the Inc. if it’s printed that way on the release?