Label Begin Date

Label > Label Begin Date

• 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

The begin date property of a Label stores the date at which the label was created. The meaning may depend on the LabelType:

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

Like other dates in MusicBrainz (be it ReleaseDates, dates in AdvancedRelationships, artist begin and end dates) the begin date of a Label can vary in its accuracy from just a year to the exact day. Note that you cannot enter just a day without specifying a month or just a month without a year though.

The begin date of a Label corresponds with the LabelEndDate.