Label: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:28, 26 May 2015

Labels are one of the most complicated and controversial parts of the music industry. The main reason for that being that the term itself is not clearly defined and refers to at least two overlapping concepts: imprints, and the companies that control them. Fortunately, in many cases the imprint and the company controlling it have the same name.

What is a label?

Imprint

Labels in MusicBrainz refer mainly to imprints.

An imprint is (strictly, and nothing more than) a brand (and trademark) associated with the marketing of sound recordings (an imprint is not a company). An imprint may be marketed as a project, unit or division of the company that manages it. Imprints are the information you certainly want to add in the database and is the information available on sleeves in the form of a label logo (a.k.a. imprint). Imprints are labels, as one usually understand it. Specifically, you should favor using names as they are represented on the imprint, rather than using a company name (usually found in "copyright"/"produced" mentions).

Record company

To a lesser extent, a label entity may be created in the database to represent a record company.

A record company typically manages imprints, and coordinates the production / manufacturing / promotion / relations with artist / PR / distribution of sound recordings. Record companies may directly handle one or more of these aspects, or may sign contractual agreements with other companies to do the job. In some specific cases, you may want to create a label in the database to represent such a company name rather than an imprint: usually, such a move is required when labels went through complex merge/split operations and you need relationships to structure the imprints list and represent their history in a meaningful way. It can also make sense to add such a company in order to use the manufacturing and distribution relationships. Please note, though, that there is no need to "de-duplicate" companies from imprints when their name are very close.

Music group

Lastly, we also store music groups.

A music group is a financial holding company, whose purpose is solely to control and manage other companies directly involved in the production of sound recordings. For record companies, the use of Music groups is reserved for specific cases that you will likely not encounter unless you're doing some research intensive background work on structuring the labels list.

Others

At this time, we don't keep track of companies involved in the other aspects of the music industry (PR, management, etc.), and we don't get into too much financial details, or try to represent exactly the socio-economic organization of companies. There are three reasons for that:

this information is usually not available from sleeves
this information is irrelevant to the MusicBrainz goal of being the ultimate source of music information
such a project would be extremely complicated and our current data model is not fit for it

There are several entities that are not correct labels for which we still keep an entry so we can stop people from adding releases to them. You can find a list of them here.

Examples

Original Production: EMI Records
Holding: EMI Group

Style guidelines

We have no specific guidelines for labels.

Label properties

Name

The official name of the label.

The label name should be represented as found on media sleeves, including use of characters from non latin charsets, stylized characters, etc.

If a label is renamed a new label should be created and a label rename relationship created between the two.

If there exists multiple slightly different names for the label (eg: The Verve Music Group, Verve Music Group, VMG), you should use the most commonly used name, or the one used on the label's official site.

Labels are not always named uniquely, and different labels may share the same label name. To help differentiate between identically named labels, you should use a disambiguation comment and possibly an annotation as well.

Label Code

The label code is the "LC" code of the label.

Type

The type describes the main activity of the label.

IPI code

An IPI (interested party information) code is an identifying number assigned by the CISAC database for musical rights management. See IPI for more information, including how to find these codes.

ISNI code

The International Standard Name Identifier for the label. See ISNI for more information.

Alias

Aliases are used to store alternate names or misspellings. For more information and examples, see the page about aliases.

Begin and end dates

The exact meaning of the begin and end dates depends on the type of label. Note that it's usually hard to know if an imprint has folded or is just on hold, and in generally the end date should only be entered if there's a clear indication of its demise.

Begin date

For officially registered trademarks or companies (holdings, distributors), it's the date at which it was registered.
For imprints, collection names (when used as labels) and subdivisions (or subsidiaries) for which there is no available creation date, it's the release date of the first release ever issued under that label name.
For bootleg companies (more generally for obscure/dubious companies), it's also tolerable to use the release date of the first release, unless more accurate data is available.

End date

For companies (holdings, distributors), it's the date at which the company stopped to exist (be it bankrupted or dismantled).
For imprints, collection names (when used as labels) and subdivisions (or subsidiaries) for which there is no available dismantling date, it's the release date of the last release ever issued under that label name.
For bootlegs companies (or otherwise obscure/dubious companies), it's also tolerable to use the release date of the last release, unless one has more accurate information.

Country

The country of origin for the label.

MBID

See the page about MBIDs for more information.

Disambiguation comment

See the page about comments for more information.

Annotation

See the page about annotations for more information.

Additional information

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+'''Labels''' are one of the most complicated and controversial parts of the music industry. The main reason for that being that the term itself is not clearly defined and refers to at least two overlapping concepts: imprints, and the companies that control them. Fortunately, in many cases the imprint and the company controlling it have the same name.
-{| border="1"
-|-
-| ~+'''Labels''' +~
-|-
-| '''Content:'''
-|}
+==What is a label?==
-{{LabelsStatus}}
-==What is a Record Label?==
+=== Imprint ===
-<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">-- ''(derived from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_label Wikipedia])''
+Labels in MusicBrainz refer mainly to imprints.
-</ul>
+An imprint is (strictly, and nothing more than) a brand (and trademark) associated with the marketing of sound recordings (an imprint is not a company). An imprint may be marketed as a project, unit or division of the company that manages it. Imprints are the information you certainly want to add in the database and is the information available on sleeves in the form of a label logo (a.k.a. imprint). Imprints are labels, as one usually understand it. Specifically, you should favor using names as they are represented on the imprint, rather than using a company name (usually found in "copyright"/"produced" mentions).
-'''Record labels''' may refer to:
-* Music groups:
-** A music group is a financial holding, whose purpose is solely to control and manage other companies directly involved in the production of sound recordings
-* Record companies:
+=== Record company ===
+To a lesser extent, a label entity ''may'' be created in the database to represent a record company.
-** A record company manages imprints, and coordinates the production / manufacturing / promotion / enforcement of copyright protection / relations with artist / PR / distribution of sound recordings. Record labels may directly handle one or more of these aspects, or may sign contractual agreements with other companies to do the job.
+A record company typically manages imprints, and coordinates the ''production / manufacturing / promotion / relations with artist / PR / distribution'' of sound recordings. Record companies may directly handle one or more of these aspects, or may sign contractual agreements with other companies to do the job. In some specific cases, you may want to create a label in the database to represent such a company name rather than an imprint: usually, such a move is required when labels went through complex merge/split operations and you need [[Relationships|relationships]] to structure the imprints list and represent their history in a meaningful way. It can also make sense to add such a company in order to use the manufacturing and distribution relationships. Please note, though, that there is no need to "de-duplicate" companies from imprints when their name are very close.
-* Imprints:
-** An imprint is (strictly, and nothing more than) a brand (and trademark) associated with the marketing of sound recordings (an imprint is not a company). An imprint may be marketed as a project, unit or division of the company that manages it.
+=== Music group ===
-[[MusicBrainz]] should keep track of imprints, companies involved into either production or distribution, and to some extent music groups. Typically, all these informations are available on the media sleeves.
+Lastly, we also store music groups.
+A music group is a financial holding company, whose purpose is '''solely''' to control and manage other companies directly involved in the production of sound recordings. For record companies, the use of Music groups is reserved for specific cases that you will likely not encounter unless you're doing some research intensive background work on structuring the labels list.
-At that time, we don't think we should keep track of companies involved in the other aspects of the music industry (PR...), or get into too much financial details. There are two reasons for that:
-* such informations are usually not available from sleeves
-* they are probably irrelevant to [[MusicBrainz]] goal (being a '''music''' database)
+=== Others ===
-==Informations about labels stored in the database==
+At this time, we '''don't''' keep track of companies involved in the other aspects of the music industry (PR, management, etc.), and we '''don't''' get into too much financial details, or try to represent exactly the socio-economic organization of companies. There are three reasons for that:
+* this information is usually not available from sleeves
+* this information is irrelevant to the MusicBrainz goal of being the ultimate source of ''music'' information
+* such a project would be extremely complicated and our current data model is not fit for it
+There are several entities that are '''not''' correct labels for which we still keep an entry so we can stop people from adding [[Release|release]]s to them. You can find [[Label/Non-Labels|a list of them here]].
-These fields are stored directly in each label's record:
-* [[Label ID|LabelID]]: the UUID of the label (not editable)
-* [[Label Name|LabelName]]: the name of the label
-* [[Label Sort Name|LabelSortName]]: the sortname of the label
-* [[Label Alias|LabelAlias]]: aliases
-* [[Label Code|LabelCode]]: the unique code of the label
-* [[Label Begin Date|LabelBeginDate]]: this is the creation date (or "first used name" date) of the label entity
-* [[Label End Date|LabelEndDate]]: this is the date at which the company went bankrupt, was dismantled, or the name was used for the last time
-* [[Label Comment|LabelComment]]: field to distinguish between identically named labels
-* [[Label Annotation|LabelAnnotation]]: general information about the label that may be of interest to other users
-* [[Label Country|LabelCountry]]: the country in which the company was founded
-* [[Label Type|LabelType]]: the "type" of the label
+== Examples ==
-Many other kinds of information can be represented using [[Advanced Relationships|AdvancedRelationships]]. You can read [[Advanced Relationship Type|AdvancedRelationshipType]]<code><nowiki></nowiki></code>s for informations on all kind of relationships, or more specifically check [[Label Relationship Class|LabelRelationshipClass]] for label centric informations.
+* Original Production: [[Label:022fe361-596c-43a0-8e22-bad712bb9548|EMI Records]]
+* Holding: [[Label:a8f3eb19-05db-4895-b1d2-7ec911022a5e|EMI Group]]
+== Style guidelines ==
-==Editing labels==
+We have no specific guidelines for labels.
+== Label properties ==
-Any [[MusicBrainz]] user can edit labels in several ways:
-* The system provides the following [[Edit Type|EditType]]<code><nowiki></nowiki></code>s:
-** [[Add Labels Edit|AddLabelsEdit]] (autoedit)
-** [[Remove Label Edit|RemoveLabelEdit]]
-** [[Edit Label Edit|EditLabelEdit]]
-** [[Merge Labels Edit|MergeLabelsEdit]]
+=== Name ===
-==Informative external resources about labels==
+The official name of the label.
+The label name should be represented as found on media sleeves, including use of characters from non latin charsets, stylized characters, etc.
-{| border="1"
-|-
-| 300px-WMM-nielsensvg
-|}
+If a label is renamed a new label should be created and a [[rt:e6159066-6013-4d09-a2f8-bc473f21e89e|label rename relationship]] created between the two.
-The following sites are useful to find labels homepages:
-* [http://www.rlabels.com/ http://www.rlabels.com/]
-* [http://www.allrecordlabels.com/ http://www.allrecordlabels.com/]
+If there exists multiple slightly different names for the label (eg: ''The Verve Music Group'', ''Verve Music Group'', ''VMG''), you should use the most commonly used name, or the one used on the label's official site.
-Wikipedia has an extensive labels list, and a lot of articles:
-* [[WikiPedia:List_of_record_labels|Wikipedia labels list page]]
+Labels are not always named uniquely, and different labels may share the same label name. To help differentiate between identically named labels, you should use a [[Disambiguation Comment|disambiguation comment]] and possibly an [[Annotation|annotation]] as well.
-Genre oriented resources:
-* Jazz:
-** [http://www.trombone-usa.com/jazz-labels.htm Scott Yanow label page]: usefull for a quick heads-up about some labels
-** [http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Labels Michael Fitzgerald label page]: has a *lot* of catalogs (although not really detailed)
-** [http://www.jazzdisco.org/ The jazz discography project] has not a lot of labels catalogs, but when they have one, it's good!
+=== Label Code ===
-[[MusicBrainz]] resources:
+The [[Label/Label_Code|label code]] is the "LC" code of the label.
-<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">There have been preliminary attempts at consolidating data about labels prior to the introduction of labels into the database. They are to be found here:
- * [[Catalog Codes|CatalogCodes]] providing some catalog schemes
- * [[Jazz/Labels]] providing informations/links/catalogs for a number of jazz oriented labels
+=== Type ===
-</ul>
+The [[Label/Type|type]] describes the main activity of the label.
+=== IPI code ===
-Global market share overview:
+An IPI (interested party information) code is an identifying number assigned by the CISAC database for musical rights management. See [[IPI]] for more information, including how to find these codes.
-<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">There are mainly "4 big ones": Universal Music Group, EMI Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG who own a vast majority of all other labels.
-</ul>
+=== ISNI code ===
-==F.A.Q./Miscellaneous==
+The International Standard Name Identifier for the label. See [[ISNI]] for more information.
-===How to handle autoreleases?===
+=== Alias ===
+Aliases are used to store alternate names or misspellings. For more information and examples, see the [[Aliases|page about aliases]].
+=== Begin and end dates ===
-In some cases, artists "autoproduce" and "autorelease" their own records. As long as an imprint is possible to positively identify, it should be used as a label entry. If there's no such thing, or if the creation of such a label entry is discutable, we may want to use [[Special Purpose Label|SpecialPurposeLabel]]<code><nowiki></nowiki></code>s (possibly [autorelease]).
+The exact meaning of the begin and end dates depends on the type of label. Note that it's usually hard to know if an imprint has folded or is just on hold, and in generally the end date should only be entered if there's a clear indication of its demise.
+:;Begin date:
-===Can an imprint and the company that controls it have the same name?===
+:* For officially registered trademarks or companies (holdings, distributors), it's the date at which it was registered.
+:* For imprints, collection names (when used as labels) and subdivisions (or subsidiaries) for which there is no available creation date, it's the release date of the first release ever issued under that label name.
+:* For bootleg companies (more generally for obscure/dubious companies), it's also tolerable to use the release date of the first release, unless more accurate data is available.
+:;End date:
-Yes, definitely. Actually, a company "A" may sell its own imprint "A" to another company "B" and continue to exist as company "A", while the imprint is being operated by company "B"... This can result in really confusing situations... Usually though, editors in [[MusicBrainz]] will deal with imprints exclusively (which *is* the information available on sleeves).
+:* For companies (holdings, distributors), it's the date at which the company stopped to exist (be it bankrupted or dismantled).
+:* For imprints, collection names (when used as labels) and subdivisions (or subsidiaries) for which there is no available dismantling date, it's the release date of the last release ever issued under that label name.
+:* For bootlegs companies (or otherwise obscure/dubious companies), it's also tolerable to use the release date of the last release, unless one has more accurate information.
-===Known problems and limitations===
+=== Country ===
+The [[Label/Country|country]] of origin for the label.
+=== MBID ===
-The system currently has known limitations, that may be solved later:
+See the [[MusicBrainz Identifier|page about MBIDs]] for more information.
-* Ideally, we could be able to attach multiple release events (release date and country) to a unique catalog number / EAN. -- [[User:dmppanda|dmppanda]] 21:22, 03 November 2006 (UTC)
-* Also one release event could use multiple labels. For example Inside Out Music records are always distributed by SPV and they have an SPV catalogue number as well as an IO catalogue number. Therefore I think one "release set" should contain: several <release date, release region> pairs, several <label, catalogue number> pairs and single fields such as the [[EAN]] (of which the barcode is just the representation, but could leave the name like that as it's easier to identify for users which don't know that). -- [[User:Shepard|Shepard]] 13:37, 07 January 2007 (UTC)
-* ARs such as the [[Discogs Relationship Type|DiscogsRelationshipType]] and the [[Amazon Relationship Type|AmazonRelationshipType]] would ideally be attached to a release set - but I guess that has to wait until we can separate between releases and albums. :) -- [[User:Shepard|Shepard]] 13:37, 07 January 2007 (UTC)
-** I'm not sure I understand correctly these last points. How would we allow: on one hand, a single release event (country, date) to be linked to several different label/cat/bar (as in your example), and to single AMZ/Discogs links, and on the other hand, a single release set (single label/cat/bar) to be linked to several different release events and several different AMZ/Discogs links? Though this question is theoretical ;) - Also do you imply that Discogs/AMZ links should be unique to a release set? -- [[User:dmppanda|dmppanda]] 16:15, 07 January 2007 (UTC)
-*** Well, one release date could refer to several label releases (ie, different pages on amazon and discogs), and indeed, different release dates could refer to different label releases. Finally, one label release (ie, page on amazon and discogs) could be a release on 2 or more labels (eg [http://www.discogs.com/release/374880 http://www.discogs.com/release/374880]). I think the best way to to this would be to allow for ARs (specially discogs and amazon ones, perhaps others) specific to release events, but this is probably difficult/impossible. Ultimately I think this will all be easier to deal with when NGS gets here. -- [[User:Gecks|Gecks]]
-*** My initial idea in [[Release Data Set|ReleaseDataSet]] was to have one set for each unique release (identified by the EAN for example, although sometimes not even they identify a unique release). In this set you would then have a list of <release date, release country> pairs - still for this unique release, because different countries have different days in the week when music is mostly released, so the item with the EAN 1234567890123 could be released on Monday in .de and on Wednesday in the UK for example. Then you would also store a list of <label, cat> pairs, because different labels work on one unique release - as I described in my example above, InsideOut releases are always distributed by SPV and both have their own catalogue system. And then you store other identifiers in this set, like the EAN, Discogs/ASIN stuff (yes, unique to a release set).<br/> Note though that this page here is about a first step into the right direction. The ideas in [[Release Data Set|ReleaseDataSet]] are relativised by NGS where the whole tracklisting with titles, tracktimes, [[Disc ID|DiscID]]s and so on would be included in a "release set". So, not everything needs to be coded yet, limitations are implied. One label per release date is a good start. If this was to be extended before labels go live, I would prefer multiple labels per date over multiple dates per label, but that's just a personal preference. -- [[User:Shepard|Shepard]] 15:22, 09 January 2007 (UTC)
+=== Disambiguation comment ===
-==Discussion==
+See the [[Disambiguation Comment|page about comments]] for more information.
+=== Annotation ===
-* The use of a label entity for collections names must be made with extra-care. Definitely, one must not use collection names printed on the front cover as a label name, but only if the collection name is printed in place of the label name, and is really used by the producing label as is. For example, any of the "Verve Jazz Masters" releases are from label Verve, dot, and "Jazz Masters" should be part of the release name. Compare this with the Original Jazz Classics releases, by label Fantasy. -- [[User:dmppanda|dmppanda]] 21:22, 03 November 2006 (UTC)
+See the [[Annotation|page about annotations]] for more information.
-<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">Although... it's somewhat an interesting side-effect to be able to use phony labels as collection names...
-</ul>
-* How should artists that release their own stuff be handled? Create a label page for the artist? (I know of several autoreleasers within the Danish folk music milieu alone.) --[[User:FrederikSOlesen|FrederikSOlesen]] {{DateTime}}
-** I guess it boils down to: does a legal entity (association, company, whatever) exists, and does the media bears a barcode? If so, then *this* (whatever *this* is) is the "label" (even if owned by the artist, even if nothing more than a trademark name to which the barcode has been attributed. If not, then I guess we are dealing with people distributing CDr around, out of any kind of structure (be it commercial or legal), right? In this case, IMO there is no label at all (and possibly no release event either). Probably the same goes for "internet" releases out of any "official" structures. Wether we want a "phony" label (or more than one?) to distinguish between such "autorelease" and "no-info-yet-release" is an open question. -- [[User:dmppanda|dmppanda]] 08:47, 07 November 2006 (UTC)
+== Additional information ==
-* It would be useful to have an 'add label' link on the page generated when you 'use this release in a relationship' -- [[User:Gecks|Gecks]]
+* [[How to Identify Labels|How to identify labels]]
-** uh, i was kinda confused :) i thought labels > release relationships were done through AR, but it's actually a link to a release event. Just thought I'd put this down for the record as I guess some others might make the same mistake? Not sure how to stop that happening, though... -- [[User:Gecks|Gecks]]
+* [[Style/Unknown_and_untitled/Special_purpose_label|Special purpose labels]]
+* [[Label/FAQ|Label FAQ]]
+* [[Subscription|Label subscriptions]]
+* [[Label/Resources|Extra resources]]
+[[Category:WikiDocs Page]] [[Category:Terminology]] [[Category:Label]]
-* I would like to subscribe to Labels, simular as for artists. -- [[User:Schika|Schika]]
-** If I recall well that conversation on the mailing-list (check the link at the top of the page), I think luks said it was planned -- [[User:dmppanda|dmppanda]] 16:15, 07 January 2007 (UTC)
-[[Category:To Be Reviewed]] [[Category:Terminology]] [[Category:Label]]