Re: [mb-users] Are different digital downloads different releases?

2013/1/2 Kuno Woudt <[email protected]>

>
> (Again, I'm only saying that digital releases should be kept seperate
> when there are actual differences between them -- different cover art,
> or different audio, digital booklet included or not, stuff like that).
>

Most digital releases get encoded from the same source; there are even
services <http://www.tunecore.com/index/how_it_works> which allow the
artist to upload the content once and have it submitted to several services
simultaneously, and stores which let you download the release you bought in
multiple formats. The encoding is generally an automated process and can
change at any time even inside the same store (think of when iTunes started
offering 256kbps "plus" files instead of the previous 128kbps ones and
reencoded all the releases). Even the artwork can change over time: iTunes
previously offered 600x600 covers, but now has 1200x1200 versions; eMusic
once had only tiny cover thumbnails, then started offering huge 1400x1400px
images, then they recompressed those images to make them smaller without
changing the resolution, and now only offers 600x600 ones. Should each of
these changes trigger a different release?

For physical releases, we generally consider different pressings of the
same release to be a single entity, even though there can be minor
differences in the disc (such as a few more sectors in the last track,
which results in a different disc ID) or artwork (one pressing can have
more faded colors than another, or a different "pressing number" as is
common in Brazilian releases). It seems to me that we already use an
ArtistIntent-like approach for them, and only consider releases as
different when it was actually the artist's or label's intention to make
them different; we should do the same for digital releases. If the album in
one service has a digital booklet which is not available on the others, or
the artwork is actually different (as opposed to being simply resized,
recompressed or slightly cropped to each service's standards), or it has
been mastered differently (such as the "Mastered for iTunes" releases), or
has a different label than another, then a new release is justified, but
not simply encoding differences.

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