Why does RGs use earliest release dates of bootlegs and cancelled releases instead of the official ones?

This album by Kim Petras was going to be originally released in 2022. It leaked and the label cancelled the release. Then she released her first studio album this year and this week she officially released Problématique as her second studio album, but because there are already bootleg releases in the RG, the date ends up as 2022, even though it was only officially released in 2023. Is there a way to fix this?

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Are they the same recordings and same mixes?

Essentially, yes. I didn’t notice any difference between the leaked versions and the ones released this week.

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Then I kind of like that they appear where they when first released (even if not officially so).

For example David Bowie, I like that Toy appears at its right place in 2011 (not 2022), and Santa Monica ’72 in 1989 (not 2008), and Los Angeles ’74 in 1990 (not 2017).

It looks better in his discography, more logical.
Even if hard to find, you knew these were available out there somewhere (in fact I didn’t know for Toy, maybe this one was really much more confidential).
Even his official albums were hard to find on CD at some period.

But it’s just with that artist I am accustomed to. I don’t know if it feels the same with Kim Petras… Apparently not?

Cancelled release dates are not used (anymore), since the music never got released so it does not make sense as a release (group) date. Bootlegs are, though, since the music did get a release in that case.

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By the way, release groups with no official releases, appear after the others, showing a strange order:

2022 Problématique
2023 Feed the Beast
2019 Happy but Sad
2022 Candy

It means my Bowie examples would have not shown in right order until there was an official release, after 10 or 20 years. :thinking:

I think someone reported this before (was it @kellnerd?) and @bitmap? had an explanation but I couldn’t find that conversation anymore.

I’m sorry, but I neither remember the conversation nor that I’ve reported it somewhere (on Discourse or on Jira). If it was me, it must have been a while ago :person_shrugging:

Edit: I just quickly went through all my posts on this forum (luckily only ~400) and haven’t found something related.

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here’s the relevant ticket for that: https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-11748, looks like it was @Lotheric you had in mind


back on topic, I don’t quite know where I stand on this… on the one hand, we probably shouldn’t use unofficial releases for determining the official release date, but on the other hand, there’s many cases where the current behavior might be desired (namely live bootlegs which later get officially released)…

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Sounds like MBS-11748. It was suggested that we could add a separator between the official/unofficial ones to make it less confusing. Or perhaps sort each section by date after the results are retrieved from the database.

Edit: @UltimateRiff beat me to it :slight_smile:

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There is a ticket where the proposed order would match this topic (official release dates), while retaining strict chronological order (including unofficial) when displaying all release groups: