View source for User:Jacobbrett/How to Identify Release Details

This guide covers how to retrieve information via websites, CD/Vinyl covers and barcodes. Note there is also a guide on [[Obi Strip|Obi Strips]].

==Identifying Release Details==
===Via CD liner===
Most CDs released by commercial labels will have some identifiable information on various parts of the cover and liner notes.
* The barcode is usually found on the back cover.
* The catalogue number is usually found on the back cover and spine of the case.
* Identifying the release country may be confirmed by copyright remarks such as "Marketed in '''Australia''' by '''Universal Music Australia''' under exclusive licence." The two previous bolded instances are likely give-aways of the release country.
* The label is usually identifiable on the back cover and spine. If there are two or more labels present, use the label that corresponds to the catalogue number (for example, ''CDCBS 66012'' is obviously a catalogue number of CBS Records). This may be tricky if it is simply a string of numbers, it may help to lookup the release on both label websites for further clue.

===Via label or discography websites===
* Official label websites may contain varying amounts of release event data depending on the website, and are considered a reliable source.
* Discography websites, such as [http://www.discogs.com/ Discogs], or even fan-sites that attempt to list details on every release by an artist are useful in checking data consistency.

===Via barcode===
The release details may additionally be identified by looking up the release's EAN/UPC barcode via a search engine, finding a release of matching EAN on an Amazon domain, or using Luks' [[wikipedia:European Article Number|EAN]]/[[wikipedia:Universal Product Code|UPC]] [http://users.musicbrainz.org/~luks/ean.html barcode checker] (this last method is not always accurate, eg Frances the Mute uses the same barcode for the Australian, Canadian and European release, which comes up as "U.S. and Canada" in the barcode checker).
* This is usually an effective method of finding the release date for a particular release.

==Determining the Release Country==
The list of countries you can choose from is taken from [http://www.iso.org/iso/english_country_names_and_code_elements ISO 3166], which is a widely-used standard list of countries. Please do '''not''' use the release country to describe the country in which the release was produced, or from which the artist originates. For each country in which the release was issued, add a new release date, alongside the name of the country.

''A 'Release Country' is '''not''' the same as a country where the physical medium has been manufactured or the cover printed.''

===Composite Release Areas===
Not all record distributors stick to national boundaries when they define the regions in which they issue a release. Releases are often issued in more than one country at the same time. For example, some releases state that they are distributed in "Australasia" (presumably Australia and New Zealand) or the "Benelux" (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). In these cases it is OK to add one release, and simply choose one of the countries to represent the entire release area:
* Choose the Artist's country of origin. Shihad is a New Zealand band; if they release a release in Australasia, define the [[Release Country|ReleaseCountry]] as New Zealand.
* Where this information is unknown or ambiguous, choose the country with the largest sales.

===Fuzzy Release Areas===
[[MusicBrainz]] also has some fuzzy release areas:
<dl><dt>Unknown Country
<dd>To be used when you do not know the release country, but can add other information about the release event.
<dt>Worldwide
<dd>"Worldwide" is generally used for a release that has been released online on a certain date, available to the worldwide online population.
* It should not be used for releases through services such as iTunes and Napster, as they usually have multiple release dates on their online store which are country-dependant (usually corresponding with retail release dates).
* It should also be used where a global distributor does release in most of the world on the same date (which is extremely rare).
<dt>Europe
<dd>Trade within the European Union is so open that it can be really difficult to figure out in which European country a release was released.
* If a release cannot be pin-pointed to a particular country, use "Europe".
* "Europe" may be used if a release is released in a large proportion of the EU countries on the same date.
* Note that an album might, for example, have one release in the UK, followed by a second wider release that covers the whole of the EU, including the UK.
''Do not use this simply because it says "Produced in the EU" on your CD!''</dl>

===Historical Countries===
Historical countries (countries that may exist on the back of a release, but do not exist anymore) such as "Yugoslavia (historical, 1918-2003)" are also contained within the '''Release Country''' list.

==Identifying Labels==

[[Chinese Labels]]

===The simple cases===

Before the massive mergers that occurred in the music industry during the last part of the 20th century, and for most labels, the situation was pretty simple: a single company would issue releases "using" a single imprint (its trademark, or logo).

====A 1959 vinyl example====

[[release:76bf12c5-b34e-416b-a11a-c6e58d9e7c26|Cecil Taylor, Looking Ahead]]

On the front cover, the imprint name is featured on the top right hand ("Contemporary Records"), alongside the catalog number ("S7562"):
* [[Image:looking1.jpg]]

On the back sleeve, you can find the company name (at the bottom):
* [[Image:looking2.jpg]]

The imprint name is also featured prominently on the inner sticker of the vinyl (this is actually "the imprint"):
* [[Image:looking3.jpg]]

Note the full company name (Contemporary Records, INC) is slightly different from the imprint name (Contemporary Records, which you should use here).

====A 1995 CD example====

[[release:8083d9ed-e8a1-4d7e-8baf-056a5e2f2a38|John Zorn, First Recordings 1973]]

Here also it's pretty straight forward. The label name appears both on the obi strip (along with the barcode)
* [[Image:firstrec1.jpg]]

And also on the bottom of the back sleeve
* [[Image:firstrec2.jpg]]

The catalog number appears on the side of the box (TZ 7304).

Note that in a lot of cases, you'll find the imprint on the cd itself as well, or on the side of the box.

===Don't get fooled by the company name holding the imprint===

At some point, though, the de-correlation between companies and imprints went on, quickly moving toward a situation where in a lot of cases:
* a company has an entirely different name than the imprint it controls (possibly, it bought the remains of the bankrupted previous owner of the trademark)
* a given company controls (several) different imprints (that it either created or bought) with different names, as to issue different kind of stuff / geared toward different public)

The relevant part, which you should use in release events, is still the imprint!

Here, a relatively straight-forward case: the Emarcy company was long deceased in 1991 - though its imprint was owned by Polygram (eg: Polygram bought the rights to use the "Emarcy" trademark as a label, and to issue under that name).

[[release:d6674971-f530-4dfe-a55a-8a37dfd3df6d|Eric Dolphy Last Date]] (from 1991)
* [[Image:lastdate.jpg]]

Note that this one is relatively easy (the "Polygram" name is quite discreet - though obviously the copyright owner and producer of the release), while the Emarcy logo is the one featured, and is indicated on the side of the box. Some cases are a bit more complicated. Nevertheless, again here the correct label to use is the imprint, Emarcy.

On the other hand, be careful that in some cases a company owning a specific imprint, along with the right to issue the catalog of the former owner, may do so using a new (different) imprint while still reproducing the original imprint logo as well as to indicate the origin of the stuff! Such cases might prove a little more complicated and should be handled on a case by case basis (see the OJC example below).

===Don't get fooled by the manufacturer or the distributor===

The music business getting more complex and globalized, the making of releases also became more complicated and began involving more than the company producing the release (usually at least an additional manufacturer and a distributor), and a (somewhat) recent trend pushed to a state where these companies would ''also'' print their own logos on the sleeves, alongside the ''producing'' label logo.

Right now, we don't care at all about manufacturers - and almost neither about distributors (at least, newcomers editors are heavily discouraged to dabble with distributors editing), so, the right choice is the label ''producing'' the release.

Usually, you can identify the record ''company'' by taking a look at the producing ((p)) or copyright ((c)) mention. Then you can probably identify the imprint name from that.

The [[Label Code|LabelCode]] may also be a very helpful piece of information in identifying the correct label.

Here, [[release:a4df9ee8-b1a2-4d5d-93e2-8aeaf74d47f0|Tom Waits Mule Variations]], a release by the ''Anti'' label (distributed and manufactured in Europe by Epitaph) (Anti has [[Label Code|LabelCode]] 02576).
* [[Image:mule-variations.jpg]]

Obviously, CD can very well feature a number of random logos (distributor, manufacturer, holding company, artist manager company), and sorting these may turn out more complicated than above.

Still, using the [[Label Code|LabelCode]], the copyright/produced mentions, eliminating these mentioned in the "distributed/manufactured" and the holding company usually proves efficient to sort the ins and out.

===The completely awkward cases===

In some cases, you really call for troubles. If you experience difficulties, your best shot is probably to ping one of the subscribers for the artist/label concerned, upload a sleeve scan and ask him/her for help.

Here is such an interesting case, in its full insane glory...
* [[Image:latinjazz.jpg]]

How to proceed?

The easy part:
* ignore ZYX as the manufacturer
* ignore the distributors

That leaves us with Fantasy (credited as producing the release), Prestige, Original Jazz Classics, LC 0313 and catalog number OJCCD-819-2.

Now you need to dig the history books. Though Fantasy (which is also an imprint!) is credited as (c), a little research will reveal that the Fantasy ''company'' were actually using ''Original Jazz Classics'' as an imprint to reissue stuff they owned from defunct labels, including ''Prestige''. Though the label code used here is the one of ''Prestige'', they insisted on using the OJC imprint with its own catalog scheme (typical OJCXX-XXXX) (while still featuring the imprint (and here label code!) of the original label), while later on during their history they reversed that trend and discarded the OJC line to come back to reusing the original imprint names...

A quick look in the database at the [[Label:4876cd23-c4ab-4ac5-9b49-e8ed14bc22f8|Original Jazz Classics]] entry will show you (a lot) more of these.

Either Prestige or OJC would fit here, and the choice is somewhat an arbitrary one, though, and based on Fantasy history, and following a number of other (serious) discographic resources, it was decided to use OJC for these.

Note that, on the other hand, the Japanese reprint of that stuff that Fantasy allowed Victor to put out was using solely the Prestige logo (making it technically a Prestige release)!

===When to use a company name instead of an imprint in MusicBrainz?===

Again, in 99% of the cases, you should only use '''imprints''' in release events, and most editors will only need to use/create '''imprints'''.

Using as labels '''companies that are not also imprints''' is quite rare and should be reserved to these editors who are willing to do ground-work on structuring imprints and injecting a sense of history into them (especially useful for old labels that went through many different historical phases). Such editing usually requires that you have a lot of specific knowledge about the history of the peoples and companies that made the imprints, and that you have a good judgment to achieve a decent balance between accurate and complete information, while still keeping the hierarchy in a simple state enough to make it useful (in helping structure the imprints list) and avoid the cluttering temptation of off-topic data (financial or economical details that are not directly relevant, etc).

Remember that the provision made to be able to use ''companies'' labels was only meant to ''help'' organizing and relating ''imprints'', not to make things more confusing / complicated for newcomers.

===What online databases shall I use to find labels info about releases?===

None! :-)

Unless you have some serious knowledge about the release you're editing and/or the given label, it's very unlikely that you will achieve any decent result by just sourcing a random online database, which are just like everybody else: completely lost! Most times you'll find out that online store X randomly uses the distributor/manufacturer name, duplicates entries with the same UPC but different labels, shortens the labels names, mash-up the producing/distributing labels names, etc.

The only '''serious''' source is the release sleeve!

===But, I mean, are they so bad?===

A short and subjective review:
* Amazon: is just horrible. Please don't use AMZ to source label names...
* Barnes and Noble: from average to decent, though still wrong quite sometimes
* ciao: random
* cduniverse: random
* hbdirect: one of the most serious. Their data is usually very decent
* ebay: good as long as you can peek at the sleeve, quite bad otherwise
* priceminister: good as long as you can peek at the sleeve, very bad otherwise
* discogs: from average to good, though they have a different (sometimes incompatible) label organization than us, and also have their share of defects
* AMG: (All Mangled Guide) avoid...
* Wikipedia: (Wackypedia) somewhat decent, though they really have very little data and often confuse/don't care about editions...
* others?

[[Category:How To]] [[Category:Label]]