What's the title of this release?

MusicBrainz
#1

Hi.
This release has been entered with the title “I grandi successi originali”:


If you look at the cover, on the upper right corner you can read “Flashback” and on the CD spine there is only “Flashback - Oliver Onions - 74321797222 (2)”.
On both CDs there’s also no mention of “I grandi successi originali” - instead there’s only “Flashback”.

What do you think?

1 Like
#2

I would use the title that is on the front cover

#3

Only “I grandi successi originali” or also “Flashback”?

#4

“I grandi successi originali” appears to be a series name, and “Flashback” appears to be an imprint of the RCA Italiana record label. There is a long list of albums with those emblems for many different artists.

Discogs seems really inconsistent on this, but there is some corroboration:

Musicbrainz has a series called “I Grandi Successi Originali,” but it also has that as the album title for most (but not all) of the albums.

It sounds like this is a question that needs an authoritative decision followed by some clean-up. If it were me, I would say:

  • Album title: Simply the artist’s name
  • Series: “I grandi successi originali”
  • Label: “RCA Italiana” and “Flashback” (and possibly “BMG,” if it’s on the back cover)

screenshot from Discogs:

image
image795×380 75.9 KB

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#5

My take is partially different:

  • Both ‘I grandi successi originali’ and ‘Flashback’ are series. In many cases they will overlap on the same releases (see the release posted above, or https://www.discogs.com/release/10977326 for a later example), but on some releases only one of the two (usually Flashback) will apply. I do acknowledge that the distinction between sublabel and series can sometimes be blurry, but the rationale is that Flashback is not a separate (sub)entity with its own discographic history.
  • Release title: no strong view. For the 2000-2004 releases, ‘I grandi successi originali’ seems a lot more prominent on the front cover than ‘Flashback’, which is probably why that became the natural choice for many editors. For the 2009 releases, both seem equally prominent.
  • The label should be determined on a case by case basis, based on https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Identify_Labels and following the usual MB practices (i.e. not listing every single entity, but only the relevant one(s)). As per the annotation over at https://musicbrainz.org/series/34f3e11e-dfa4-43f1-b094-6228d5f0af4c, releases in this series usually carry the Ricordi, RCA or RCA Italiana imprints. I don’t know where ‘Sony Italia’ comes from, but please please don’t use that.
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#6

‘Sony Italia’ was a memory lapse on my part. :grimacing:
I corrected it.

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#7

Wow big effort on this series @salo.rock :raised_hands:

Your edits on it go back to 2015 at least :smiley:

p.s. I’ve added a web sourced cover image, let me know if it doesn’t match

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