Release groups usage guideline

Current Musicbrainz server release feature a concept called Release Groups. Just as the name suggests, it groups several releases together in one entity. Since this is not obviously clear, this page explains the difference and gives some guidelines on how to handle them.

Both release groups and releases are "albums" in colloquial sense, but with a slight difference: a release is something you can buy as media, e.g. a CD box, a vinyl record etc. on its own, while a release group embraces the concept of an album -- it doesn't matter how many CDs or editions/versions it had. When an artist tells you "We've released our new album", he's talking about a release group. When his publisher says "This new album gets released next week in Japan and next month in Europe", he's talking about several releases belonging to the release group the artist has told you about.

Therefore a release group is a single group of releases containing:

• Normal release(s), consisting of a single disc or multiple discs.
  • Nirvana's "Nevermind"
  • Richard Wagner's "Ring der Nibelungen" - A 10 discs release
  • Linkin Park's "Bleed It Out"
  • "Bravo Hits 64" - A various artist multiple disc compilation
• Different (special) editions with additional or alternative (bonus) track(s) or disc(s).
  • Slipknot's "Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses)"
• Re-releases.

A release group is not:

• Compilations series' consisting of different volumes, released over time. A particular part or volume consisting of multiple discs is usually a release group, but not the whole series.
  • "Café del Mar"
  • "Hitzone"
  • "Ministry of Sound"
  • "Now That's What I Call Music!"
• Different bootleg recordings of a live show
  • Pink Floyd's "1970-04-29: Interstellar Encore: Fillmore West, San Francisco, USA"
  • Pink Floyd's "1970-04-29: Interstellar Fillmore: Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USA"

Musicbrainz automatically considers every release in the database to be part of a release group, even if this group only contains this one release. Therefore, grouping releases only requires merging several release groups. The following criteria should help you to decide which releases should be merged and which should not.