i’d additionally compare it with Circular 3, “Copyright Notice” so it’s clearer how phonographic copyrights of compilations must necessarily differ from those of original releases containing the component sound recordings (page 3, “Phonorecords of Sound Recordings”)
in order that compilations (should they choose to) are able to refer to the ℗ copyrights of specific tracks from any number of different original releases they come from, the ℗ copyrights in all of those original releases have to be resolved down to recording level to make this information accessible to any such compilations/reissues.
Those two pages at least should contain something like:
When « ℗ 19XX Label » is printed, phonographic copyright applies to recordings.
When « (This) Compilation ℗ 19XX Label » is printed, phonographic copyright applies to release.
When « ℗ 19XX Label » is printed, phonographic copyright applies to recordings.
When « (This) Compilation ℗ 19XX Label » is printed, phonographic copyright applies to release.
cannot be a hard rule.
There’s also plenty of examples of releases where the ℗ credit in Country A is different from in Country B, even when the recordings are identical. Here are 2:
When « ℗ 19XX Label » is printed, phonographic copyright applies to recordings.
When « (This) Compilation ℗ 19XX Label » is printed, phonographic copyright applies to release.
So how do you know that Label A is associated with Release B, but Label B is associated with Release A, if you’re not going to link the Labels to the Releases? (I’ve actually seen editing to delete the Label-Release copyright relationship!) Conversely, Recording X would report multiple copyright holders which are often not true in a generic context. I don’t see how this is a good idea for MusicBrainz data.
For my understanding it is as valid as having all the new ISRC on the same recording.
But I cannot say I fully understand what is a photographic copyright, nor a copyright anyway.
I leave it up to the experts, I just need a simple guideline that non experts like me can apply with their releases in hands editing MB.
You can have multiple ℗ on the same recording, and it’s going to happen for a variety of reasons. Even in the same country, the since we re-use the same recording for remasters (which the label will surely claim a new copyright on). E.g., the Elgar collection I have been entering recently has, listed in the booklet, two ℗ dates and sometimes companies for almost every track. The later one is typically for the digital remaster.
I think it depends on whether the copyright relationships are meant to represent a copyright statement or a term of copyright (a span of time of copyright protection). If it’s a statement, then I think I agree with keeping the relationship on the release level, as a statement (eg. “℗ 2015 Naxos Rights US, Inc.”) is release-specific information.
Use of the recording-level ℗ relationship could be restricted to (only) the original copyright holder and year of publication.
That’s a different relationship. It’s in edit release (not relationships) and shows up on the right under “Labels”, along with the catalog number. There are also a bunch of release-label relationships in the relationship editor, not just phonographic copyright.
I don’t think anyone is saying we shouldn’t link the releases to labels.
Not really sure how that follows from it being a statement of copyright. Releases can state they claim copyright on the compilation (thus on the release) or on the individual recordings (thus on the recording) or, even, on both.
Saying “whatever! we don’t care! Multiple dates is ugly! Put it on the release” also doesn’t work. For a fair number of releases, different tracks have different ℗ dates and companies. Having a pile of ℗ dates and companies on a release without any way to tell what tracks they belong to is far less useful. So essentially then we’d be left with using the release annotation for any hope of accurate information—and that’s also far less useful, as its not standardized or easily machine parsable.
Take a look at https://musicbrainz.org/release/db77f67d-9e9b-4623-8ea1-baab173cbe49/cover-art — the booklet gives ℗ dates and companies for each track on 19 CDs and then a separate ℗ date and company for the compilation. By putting track ℗ on the recordings and the compilation ℗ on the release, that is essentially all represented in the MB schema (the only thing not represented is which of the dates is the digital remaster). Your proposal would have (quick guess) 40+ ℗ relationships on the release and convey significantly less information. It would also mean that the work that went into entering that information can’t be shared with other releases of the same recordings, even things like https://musicbrainz.org/release/2546da4f-9402-4ada-9426-3a79b8ed2e5e which share the same discs (down to disc ID and content, at least).
Copyright law considers anything that has some minimal level of creativity in it a new work, eligible for a new phonographic copyright. Each of those typically only has one date (though if its worked on by one person/company over the course of two years it may wind up with two years). But at MB, we consider all those different (from copyright’s perspective) works as one recording. So a recording will naturally end up with multiple ℗ dates, potentially from many labels. So even with first-date-only, you’d still get a bunch of dates/owners on the recording. (There are more reasons to get multiple, of course, that’s just one).
I don’t know if you’re being facetious, but in modern releases, copyright holders are nearly always different MB Label(s) than what we’d use as the release label. If you need details or annotated examples, please ask.
Ok—let me see if everyone agrees. I’ve never played the the poll tool before, so… an excuse to play with it
Obviously, some of these conflict (in particular, 3 vs. 4 and 5 vs. the rest). I’ve set the max to 3, as I think you can’t pick more than that without contradiction.
3 vs. 4 is intended to capture what the default should be—℗ defaults to recordings or to releases.
If a release says “compilation ℗year company”, that should be entered as a relationship on the release
If a release gives “℗year company” on a per-track (or per-track-group), that should be entered as a relationship on each recording it applies to, not on the release.
If a release gives “℗year company” for the whole release, not explicitly saying which tracks it applies to, it should generally go on the recordings, unless there is some reason to believe it doesn’t apply to all of them.
If a release gives “℗year company” for the whole release, not explicitly saying which tracks it applies to, try to determine if it likely applies to all tracks (for example, if it’s within a year of the performance dates listed for the tracks, it probably does). Only if you have reason to think it does, apply it to all recordings; otherwise, put it on the release.
℗ relationships should only go on releases, not recordings (with the exception of standalone recordings.)
I’m somewhere between #4 and #5 in the vote. I don’t like «if you have reason to think», that’s too vague. If you don’t know for sure, don’t add them to the Recordings. It’s better to play it safe (ie., add on Release level) than add them on the Recording level and later find out it doesn’t apply to (all) Recordings and we having had bad data in the meantime.
So I’d say something like:
If a release gives “℗year company” for the whole release, not explicitly saying which tracks it applies to, put it on the release. If you determine for sure that it applies to all tracks, you can put it on the recordings instead of or in addition to the release.
Necro-posting here, but having read through this, I’m left wondering, so I bring it up here, in light of recent reasonable pushback from @jesus2099 on some edits (e.g., https://musicbrainz.org/edit/101103701) I wish to resurrect this discussion & gain some clarity.
If I’ve missed this being in the style guidelines somewhere, please let me know, but I think I scoured thoroughly & am left wanting.
For me, I attach copyright & phonographic copyright to the release, not the individual recordings, unless a release specifically tells me otherwise, I view the copyrights as applying to the release not the individual recordings contained within. This is mentioned in the poll above as
“℗ relationships should only go on releases, not recordings (with the exception of standalone recordings.)”
which does appear to be less popular than
“If a release gives “℗year company” for the whole release, not explicitly saying which tracks it applies to, it should generally go on the recordings, unless there is some reason to believe it doesn’t apply to all of them.”
but it’s unclear to me if this poll result is final, or if further conversation happened elsewhere.
Thanks to @jesus2099 for their helpful critique of my edits & encouraging me to think about this
I not read the thread, but usually I’ll put a (p) at only Release level. With only a few changes to that. Sometimes an album may include one or more tracks from a different source. If the credits then say “tracks 1-10 (p) blah blah, track 11 (p) someone else” then I’ll do all the (p) at Recording level instead.
I know some editors who always put all the (p) at Recording level all the time. I see the logic in that and would not delete. It can be interesting when you look at some Recordings as this can lead to three or four (p) credits from different sources.
