User talk:BrianSchweitzer/Release Status Proposals

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Current Discussion

Archived Discussion

Be sure to look at Talk:Release Type Restructuring Proposal as that's where all of the old discussion on the overall Release Type Restructuring Proposal was, before Status and Format were split out. (Some has been moved below.)

Commercial

I still don't get what this could be. I know the term from the collectors scene though, where they use it to divide commercial from promotional records, but that's what we have "official" for (although promotional records are "official", too). So maybe it would be a good idea to think about those term and choose a different one? --Fuchs

  • 'Commercial' seems like a better name for the present 'Official'. In the proposal, the distinction between Commercial and Official is too fuzzy. Maybe we'd better drop it? --Zout
    • no and, no, commercial is *Not* official, what I mean with commercial here I mean things which are mostly sent by the record company or resold to other records companies but not added on most basic "official" discographies. kind of a reverse bootleg if you will. most "Time Life", "Now that's what I call Music", "Hits 4 Kids", "Kuschelrock" VA compilations fit under this bell. also some SA compilations like Scorpions Best (which I own) not illegal bootleg, but certainly not sanctioned by the artists.. like these arsheloads of 'best of' type things record companies try to send out to milk more money of a dead horse? those. ~mo
      • I still don't understand it 100%, but "commercial" seems to be a bad name for this afterall. How do you decide that an entry belongs to this cathegory? --Fuchs I don't like this one at all. When an act signs to a record label, they are (in most cases) effectively giving the label the right to do what they want with the music. Their appearance on VA comps etc. is as 'official' as anything else. It seems to me the only thing that would make an official release a 'commercial' release under this rule is whether or not the artist would like to be associated with the release in question. I don't really like that - it's not easily determinable. I mean, I'm sure there are acts very happy to be on those 'Now...' CDs, and some that aren't. What do you class the entire CD as? --Gecks
        • The way I read it, there are two "Dimensions" to mo's proposal: * A: Has it been sanctioned by the artist? * B: Has it been sanctioned by the record label / rightsholder? This gives you a 2x2 matrix, well not exactly but more or less it's:
          A not A
          B official commercial
          not B ? bootleg
          I am not sure how good this is. I think this duplicates what is currently stated by "album" and "compilation": An album is credited as an 'official' work of the artist, a compilation just gathers some stuff that has previously been released as an 'official' work. --DonRedman
          • Would different versions in other countries be considered 'commercial' as they often contain bonus tracks, which is a label decision rather than an artist one (at least in most cases - I suppose there's no reason an artist couldn't give other countries special treatment)? --Gecks
            • naw, just to make it simpler, I'd say no on that. ; ) ~mo
    I don't know if this whole proposal will be implemented before the NextGenerationSchema, i guess not, so in this case the issue becomes another one were we found out, that a release can either be official or a bootleg, and the release event (the thing were the release date, region etc. is stored) needs the commercial/promotional attributes. Here "commercial" will be what it really is, a record, that can be bought while a promo is a record that is a give-away for advertising purposes. --Fuchs

The idea of adding 'Commercial' is ridiculous in my opinion. "Commercial" is a word that signifies the exchange of money. It says nothing about whether an artist sanctions a release. This idea should be dropped, as all it would do is further confuse users. - artysmokes

  • You obviously don't understand where I'm going with this idea. I have said repetitively that the NAME isn't where it's at, but rather I was trying to come up with a descriptive phrase for releases which are legal (ie not bootleg) but not condoned by the artist. The name is nothing, this page tries to explain an abstract idea and give it a name. So instead of being full of it, try to READ THE PAGE I WROTE and HELP COME UP WITH A BETTER NAME, what's that? you cannot? well guess what, smart ass, that's the reason I gave it such a 'ridiculous' name in the first place, because coming up with a term or name for this is HARD. Please READ THE DOCUMENTATION & DISCUSSION before you start making unhelpful and rude comments that just illustrates how very little you have understood the subject. ~ -- mo 16:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC) Here's my take on the grid.

BrianSchweitzer 17:06, 22 May 2007 (UTC) grid2.jpg 

Official Bootleg

What about those "official bootlegs" or "fan club albums"? Examples: The official Dream Theater bootlegs,Threshold discography containing fan club albums and the Symphony X fan club produced a cd which is available only for fan club members. Shall we just say they are official? --Shepard

  • Well, they are official aren't they? But we might add a flag for releases that are not by the artist's record label, but by the artist herself. --derGraph
    • yes, they are 'official' there needs not be a flag for this. in the new age of self publishing this will be more and more the norm, adding a "flag" (o_O) here is non-functional - in 20 years or so, will we have the majority be flagged?! any such info for now can be but in an annotation ~mo

As I understood it from mailing list discussions, the (slang) term "bootleg" was going to be dropped in favour of the less debatable "unofficial". What I think is a more urgent change to be adopted is that unofficial (currently "bootleg") releases are not grouped together with official albums. This is particularly important for stressing the difference between official live albums and unofficial bootlegs of live shows. If a user wants to read the listing for Nirvana's "MTV Unplugged in New York" album, for example, he/she has to go to the Nirvana page, click on "Show All Releases" (rather than see it displayed in the box with 'Bleach', 'Nevermind' et al) and then hunt for the release amongst 200+ illegal bootlegs. We have a platinum album effectively hidden by bootlegs that were pressed in very limited quantities, or weren't even pressed at all. (Try it, it will take you several minutes). I would strongly argue that the default view for artist pages should be "Show all official releases". Unofficial releases should be hidden by default, as they clearly appeal to a select bunch of collectors, not the mainstream music researcher/tagger. - artysmokes

  • afaik there is nothing wrong with the term 'bootleg' (as a non English native, I would say that 'unofficial' has a much more unclear meaning than 'bootleg' (which I understood the meaning of intuitively right-away.) Secondly I never heard of any changes to this, nor do I think there is any urgent need to do so. Thirdly this is not the place to debate what you think of that, I seriously don't want any of your drama concerning Nirvana-bootlegs here. Your comments about how bootlegs should NOT be together with the official releases, is something I fully agree with, and that is definitely part of this, but outside of the scope of this proposal. ~ -- mo 16:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)