Vinyl Record Test Pressing, What Status?

So test pressings exist on the secondhand market of various records, these are often created by a pressing plant and then sent to the record label to confirm quality etc.

What status are these, I’m not sure on Official. I think that Promotion is probably the closest, but then there is also Withdrawn ?

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I agree Promo sounds closest. It isn’t Withdrawn as it is not fully issued at that time. It can just as equally put in as Official as it was Officially pressed - just on a very limited release. It kinda falls between categories.

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It’s not actually promotional, but it fits in there best. It must not effect the initial release date.

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Agreed, really it should be ‘Test Pressing’. Promo is for something different - marketing promotion…

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I would have set it as bootleg + comment.

I agree. Test Pressing really needs to be it’s own option on a release.

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I have quite a few of these, I set them to promotional.

They’re often sold by the label or artist as a special ($$$) version, so bootleg isn’t always accurate.

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A test pressing in itself is not strictly promotional, but in practice, if they’ve made it into the hands of the public, then they have been distributed on a promotional basis. Really, the only channels from the label to the public are as given to radio stations or magazines, given to the artist for review, or given to music executives for miscellaneous use. I don’t have any problem with setting these as promotional.

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I expect that Test Pressings are produced in small numbers probably single digits while promotional releases are/were produced in the thousands to be distributed to radio stations and music journalists etc.

Test Pressings may or may not be the exact same thing as the official release and are used to verify that the master is correct. For example, that the ISRC numbers are correct :grinning:

Promotional Releases are usually the final release, just early production releases.

So, different things. Copies of Test Pressings probably are best classified under the current set of definitions as bootlegs.

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I suspect you are talking about CD test presses @dpr? I’ve never come across those before. But I don’t know if they would qualify as ‘bootleg’ either… there’s nothing ‘unofficial’ or illegal about them, is there?

A new test press type would probably be ideal, for both CD and vinyl.

A couple of vinyl test-press examples:

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probably DVDs too~ I guess I’m not 100% certain whether this is a test pressing or promotional, but I figure with a medium label like that…

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I agree with @tigerman325 … +1 for this

I would emphasise that CD/DVD test pressings are completely different from LP test pressings, in the sense that they’re almost never distributed to the public. There’s a strong argument to add a new type for CDs/DVDs distinct from promotion, whereas for LPs, not really. There should probably be more types than “test pressing” as well, e.g. CD-Rs are sent to the CD pressing plant, or are used to hold internal, unmixed or roughly-mixed songs, both of which are as likely to leak out as a CD test pressing.

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Which format was distributed to the public?
AFAIK, the main purpose was almost always a final quality check and they only got to the public “second hand”.

Which format was distributed to the public?

LP test pressings are very frequently distributed as promotional items.

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I didn’t get any :frowning:

I’m mostly thinking of old LPs and these were rarely made in large numbers. Maybe some were sent to radio stations, but probably not in general.

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