Release/Format

Description

This field describes which medium a release is distributed on. Normally a release will be distributed on multiple media with different catalog numbers and barcodes; each should have a separate release event.

The values may be:

• CD
• DVD
• SACD
• DualDisc
• LaserDisc
• MiniDisc
• Vinyl
• Cassette
• Cartridge (4/8-tracks)
• Reel-to-reel
• DAT
• Digital Media
• Other
• Wax Cylinder
• Piano Roll
• DCC

Exhaustive list

Here's an attempt at listing some/most/all (?) known/existing audio physical support, and how we map them to our own list:

Purely audio physical supports

Name	Date of creation	Rarity	Details	Map to
Phonograph cylinder	1877	Very rare	Mechanical analog; "hill-and-dale" grooves, vertical stylus motion	Wax Cylinder
Piano roll	1883	Very rare	Mechanical digital	Piano Roll
Gramophone record	1895	Common	Mechanical analog; lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion. The terms LP record (LP, 33, or 33-1/3 rpm record), EP, 16-2/3 rpm record (16), 45 rpm record (45), and 78 rpm record (78) refers to specific types of gramophone records	Vinyl
Wire recording	1898	Rare	Analog; magnetization; no "bias"	Other
Reel-to-Reel	1930s	Rare	Analog; magnetization; "bias" dramatically increases linearity/fidelity	Reel-to-reel
Vinyl record / Quad Vinyl	1948/1957/1971	Common	Is a simple evolution of gramophone record: Analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques (LP, RIAA). Lateral grooves, horizontal stylus motion. Monaural were created in 1948, then stereo vinyl came later in 1957 and Quad in 1971: analog, with preemphasis and other equalization techniques. Combination lateral/vertical stylus motion with each channel encoded 45 degrees to the vertical.	Vinyl
4 tracks cartridge / 8 tracks cartridge / Quad 8 tracks	1962/1965/1970	Rare?	Analog, 1/4 inch wide tape, 3 3/4 inches/sec, endless loop cartridge. Quad: 4 Channel Stereo.	Cartridge (4/8-tracks)
Compact cassette	1963	(still) common?	Analog, with bias, preemphasis, 1/8 inch wide tape, 17/8 inches/sec. 1970: introduced Dolby noise reduction.	Cassette
Microcassette Minicassette	1969	Rare	Analog, 1/8 inch wide tape, mostly mono, some stereo. 2.4 cm/s or 1.2 cm/s.	Cassette
4 tracks/8 tracks/multitracks recording	?	Very rare?	This is not in itself a physical format (may be performed on a variety of equipments, from tape based equipment to digital equipment and hard disks). Likely to be only available in studios, as professional equipments.	Other
Elcaset	1976	Rare	A short lived cassette format.	Cassette
Compact Disc	1982	Widespread	PCM, Avaialble in 120mm and 80mm formats.	CD
DAT	1987	Rare		DAT
MiniDisc	1991	Common	ATRAC	MiniDisc
Digital Compact Cassette	1992	Very rare		DCC
DTS-CD a.k.a. 5.1 Music Disc	1992	Very rare	DTS Audio	CD
DVD-Audio	1999	Rare? Common?		DVD
SACD	1999	Rare? Common?		SACD

Video and mixed physical supports

Name	Date of creation	Rarity	Details	Map to
Betamax	1975	Common?	'Dolby Stereo' cinema surround sound.	Other
Laserdisc	1978	Rare?		LaserDisc
DVD	1997	Widespread		DVD
DualDisc	2003	Common?	An audio cd on one side (though not redbook), and a dvd on the other side	DualDisc
USB flash drive	2004 (as music format)	Common?		Other? Digital?
HD-DVD	2005	Rare?		?
Blu-Ray	2006	Rare?		?
VinylDisc	2007	Rare?	It is made from two fused layers; the silver layer contains the digital information (either in CD or DVD format) and the upper layer has a record groove, meaning it can be played on any record-player.	Other? DualDisc?
slotMusic	2008	Common?	slotMusic is a type of microSD memory card developed by SanDisk preloaded with music in DRM-free MP3 format and other content. The current selection of songs comes from EMI Music, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group.	Other? Digital?

(*) Rarity is just a rough indication of availability as consumer products - values are: "Very Rare", "Rare", "Common", "Widespread"

Partial list of digital audio formats

• 1985 Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF)
• 1985 Sound Designer (by Digidesign)
• 1992 WAVEform (WAV)
• 1992 Dolby Digital surround cinema sound (AC-3)
• 1992 Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC)
• 1993 Digital Theatre System (DTS)
• 1993 Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS)
• 1995 MP3
• 1999 Windows Media Audio (WMA)
• 1999 The True Audio Lossless Codec (TTA)
• 2000 Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• 2001 Advanced audio coding (AAC)
• 2002 Ogg Vorbis
• 2004 Apple Lossless (ALE or ALAC)

More information

• The original ticket that led to our implementation is 2565
• Mailing list discussion is here
• Wikipedia has a list of Audio Formats
• Discogs has its own list in their Submission Guidelines