Label/Type

Type of Label

Label > Label Type

• Status: Warning! This is a working draft for the discussion going on the style mailing list: http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-style/2006-November/004038.html. It's not official in any way!

Description

This field describes what kind of entity a Label is.

The values may be:

• distributor: should be used for companies mainly distributing other labels production, usually in a specific region of the world
  • example: ZYX, which distributes in Europe most jazz records in the Concord Music Group catalog.

• holding: should be used for holdings, conglomerates or other financial entities whose main activity is not to produce records, but to manage a large set of recording labels owned by them
  • example: Concord Music Group

• one of the "production" subtypes:
  • original production: should be used for recording labels producing entirely new releases
    • example: Riverside Records

• • bootleg production: should be used for known bootlegs (as in "illegal") companies
    • example: Charly Records

• • reissue production: should be used for labels specializing in catalog reissues
    • example: Rhino

Additional Informations

Multiple types

While most cases are pretty straightforward, there may be some where a label apparently belong to two or more different types. To some extent, the problem is similar with the releases type. Whenever that happens, you should decide based on what constitutes the main activity type of the label. While searching, you might discover that the label has different subdivisions, each handling a different activity (as an example, think about the recording label Verve, and the holding Verve Music Group). Ultimately, if there's still an ambiguity, you should use the LabelAnnotation to provide with more detailed informations.

Labels types shifting during history

Some labels have a long and troubled life, and change their main activity (say, from original to reissue, to holding). There's no way at that time to handle or properly represent that. Again, for anything that complex, use LabelAnnotations.

In all cases, remember the label type is a convenient indication, and that things should be kept simple.

Bootlegs

The bootleg type should be handled with some care, as legal issues are not usually trivial, and may even be impossible to sort out (think about the Charles Mingus "bootlegs" issued by the as-official-as-it-can-be french INA). Ultimately, you should not mark a company as bootleg just because one of its release is marked as such.

Discussion

I first introduced the additional "collection" type, as:

• collection: in some cases, a recording label uses as a label name a collection name, or an otherwise "unrelated" name (possibly the name of one subdivision), instead of their proper name
  • example: the Fantasy record label used the name Original Jazz Classics as a label name under which they reissued the catalogs they bought

After more thinkings about it, I now think this introduces undesired complexity, and that it's not justified. A "collection name", when used as a label name, is a label entity per-se, and should have its type set to one of the production subtypes.-- dmppanda 01:53, 05 November 2006 (UTC)