Label

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Revision as of 06:23, 5 November 2006 by Dmppanda (talk | contribs) (Some rewording. Stripping out the moved stuff. (Imported from MoinMoin))
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Labels

Label

Labels in MusicBrainz are used to describe the following entities:

  • a holding company: a company controlling a number of other labels (mainly the four big ones: EMI Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony BMG)
  • a distribution company: a company distributing releases for other labels in specific countries (ZYX)
  • a production label: a company producing releases (Sire Records)
  • a subdivision, a subsidiary (or in some rare case a collection name) (Original Jazz Classics)

Information about labels stored in the database

These fields are stored directly in each label's record:

  • LabelID: the UUID of the label (not editable)
  • LabelName: the name of the label
  • LabelCode: the unique code of the label
  • LabelBeginDate: this is the creation date (or "first used name" date) of the label entity
  • LabelEndDate: this is the date at which the company went bankrupt, was dismantled, or the name was used for the last time
  • LabelComment: field to distinguish between identically named labels
  • LabelAnnotation: general information about the label that may be of interest to other users
  • LabelCountry: the country in which the company was founded
  • LabelType: the "type" of the label

Possibly also:

Editing labels

Any MusicBrainz user can edit labels in several ways:

Advanced Relationships

Labels can have ARs in the BusinessAssociationRelationshipClass.

Labels can have ARs in the DiscographyRelationshipClass:

  • OfficialHomepageRelationshipType: indicates the official website of the label
    • label has an official homepage at url
    • url is the official home page of label label
  • HistoryRelationshipType: provides a link to pages where an history of the label is located
    • label has an history at url
    • url presents the history of label label
  • DiscographyRelationshipType: provides a link to a list of recordings the label has released
    • label has a discography at url
    • url presents a discography by label label
  • ImageRelationshipType: provides a link to an official logo of the label
    • label has a logo at url
    • url is a logo of label label

Labels can have ARs in the OtherDatabasesRelationshipClass:

  • This links a label to its Discogs page.

Last, similarly to ProductionRelationshipClass, we can have relations between artists and labels, to describe the work done by these artists in a label. They are similar in purpose to ProducerRelationshipType, EngineerRelationshipType, MiscellaneousProductionRelationshipType:

  • ProducerPositionRelationshipType: describes the fact a person did some production work for a label company.
    • artist A worked as a producer for label B {during period YYYY-MM-DD - YYYY-MM-DD}
    • label B contracted as a producer artist A {during period YYYY-MM-DD - YYYY-MM-DD}
  • EngineerPositionRelationshipType: describes the fact a person did some engineer work for a label company.
    • artist A worked as an engineer for label B {during period YYYY-MM-DD - YYYY-MM-DD}
    • label B contracted as an engineer artist A {during period YYYY-MM-DD - YYYY-MM-DD}
  • CreativePositionRelationshipType: describes the fact a person did some creative work for a label company. This AR should be used to describe all various kind of work in that field (illustration, art direction, photography, etc...)
    • artist A had a creative position at label B {during period YYYY-MM-DD - YYYY-MM-DD}
    • label B contracted as a creative person artist A {during period YYYY-MM-DD - YYYY-MM-DD}

Informative external resources about labels

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The following sites are useful to find labels homepages:

Wikipedia has an extensive labels list, and a lot of articles:

Genre oriented resources:

Global market share overview:

  • 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.

Known problems and limitations

The system currently has known limitations, that may be solved later:

  • Ideally, we could be able to attach multiple release events (release date and country) to a unique catalog number / EAN. -- dmppanda 21:22, 03 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

  • The use of the word "catalog" has been suggested instead of "discography", the argument being this is the exact word used in the record industry. On the other hand, using the word "discography" let us reuse the existing DiscographyRelationshipType instead of creating a new one. If catalog is to be used, the AR would be:
    • CatalogRelationshipType: provides a link to a list of recordings the label has released
      • label has a catalog at url
      • url presents a catalog of records released by label label
  • -- dmppanda 21:22, 03 November 2006 (UTC)
  • The same rewording could be used for the ImageRelationshipType which for labels is indeed LogoRelationshipType -- dmppanda 21:22, 03 November 2006 (UTC)
  • 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. -- dmppanda 21:22, 03 November 2006 (UTC)
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