Gigablah
Jan 8, 2008, 10:10 AM
The publisher database is almost finished, so it's time to discuss how we're going to fill it up.
The term 'publisher' on this site is more or less equivalent to 'label', and 'label' in the music business is akin to 'brand'. In a simple and ideal world each publisher label will have their own set of catalogue stems or identifiers and you can quickly and painlessly match them up with each other.
Hold up! Record companies are hierarchical beasts, and the major ones almost never release under a unified label. Instead they segregate releases by sublabels or imprints according to genre or the media format of the related property (there are plenty of other factors, but this is the classical scenario). For example, Geneon Entertainment releases anime-related albums under RONDO ROBE, and King Records does likewise under Star Child. For a more classic example, Alfa Records released game music under the label G.M.O. (after predecessor YEN Records).
How do we tell which is actual label? For one, you could look at the album scan. Here's one of Sega Game Music Vol.1 (28XA-107) (http://www.vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=1869):
http://www.vgmdb.net/db/assets/covers/1/8/6/9/1869-1191331782.jpg
Alfa Records, the parent company, is displayed prominently at the centre bottom, but notice that the logo on the obi is actually G.M.O. That's the publisher the album should actually be filed under*. As for the inevitable questions asking why we shouldn't just keep things simple and file everything under the parent label, note that other major cataloguing sites like http://www.discogs.com/ specify publishers to sublabel level, so for us to do otherwise would be a lowering of standards.
As you may have noticed, catalogue stems are not sufficient identifiers for sublabels. Both YEN Records and G.M.O. were under Alfa, but YEN had its own stems (YLR, YLC) while G.M.O. did not (their albums shared the ALR, ALC stems with the parent label). This gets even more complicated when you consider the role of distributors.
King Records is a major distributor for other companies, including Konami Music Entertainment and F.I.X. Records. The catalogue stems for these releases (KICA, KICM) are King's, but the publishers printed on the obi are the respective original companies. This is also why such albums sometimes have two different catalogue numbers -- one of them is the internal publisher catalogue. Examples: Tokimeki Memorial Sound Collection, KICA-7644 = LC095 (Konami), and AQUAPLUS VOCAL COLLECTION Vol.1, KICA-1421 = FA027 (F.I.X.). By the way, F.I.X. Records is a trademark of AQUAPLUS, so there are actually three different entities involved here. Both Konami and AQUAPLUS have released albums without the involvement of King Records (and F.I.X.!), so the distinction is important.
That was pretty bloody confusing, so a quick summary of the previous paragraph:
Catalogue stem for a Konami album distributed by King Records: KICA (internal: LC)
Catalogue stem for a self-distributed Konami album: LC
Catalogue stem for an AQUAPLUS album published by F.I.X. Records and distributed by King Records: KICA (internal: FA)
Catalogue stem for a self-distributed AQUAPLUS album: APCD
(Note that AQUAPLUS is actually a software publisher, not a music label)
Unfortunately the choice of catalogue stem can be somewhat arbitrary, since Lantis Records albums distributed by King Records retain their LACA/LACM stems, while Five Records albums distributed by Geneon Entertainment have a VGCD stem (Geneon normally has GNCA). And then there's the special case of the Pony Canyon / Scitron team up where both were listed as publishers for a run of PCCB albums, until Scitron split and got their own stem (SCDC)**.
So how do you tell which is the actual publisher without the aid of an album scan? You can do a Google search. Some Japanese vendor or catalogue sites specify 発売元 (publisher) and 販売元 (distributor), so include those terms in your search. Keep in mind though that some of them may not distinguish between sublabels and parent company either!
Finally, to give you an example overview of all the different companies that may be involved in music publishing for a particular IP (intellectual property) or series, here's the Utawarerumono discography (http://www.aquaplus.co.jp/uta/disc.html) (a game produced by Leaf, which is a division of AQUAPLUS). A summary of that page:
Their game-related albums are published by F.I.X. Records and distributed by King Records;
Their anime-related albums are published by Lantis Records and distributed by King Records;
Their radio albums are published by IMAGICA and distributed by VAP + Tablier Communications.
Keep the nature of these relationships in mind once the publisher database is ready for discography linking. Also, publisher will always take precedence over distributor. An album should not have a linked distributor without a linked publisher; and if the publisher is the same as the distributor, there is no need to specify the latter. If you don't know the distributor, that's fine, just the publisher is enough.
By the way, this discussion has entirely been about major Japanese record labels; life should presumably be much simpler when it comes to doujins and enclosures, since the publishing process is more direct. I'm not too familiar with Western releases, so anyone who's knowledgeable on that aspect is welcome to add to this thread.
* If you look back at the scan of Sega Game Music Vol.1, in the fine print on the obi you can see that the distributor is Warner-Pioneer, the precursor to Warner Music Japan.
** Scitron is now known as Happinet, but the catalogue stems are unchanged.
The term 'publisher' on this site is more or less equivalent to 'label', and 'label' in the music business is akin to 'brand'. In a simple and ideal world each publisher label will have their own set of catalogue stems or identifiers and you can quickly and painlessly match them up with each other.
Hold up! Record companies are hierarchical beasts, and the major ones almost never release under a unified label. Instead they segregate releases by sublabels or imprints according to genre or the media format of the related property (there are plenty of other factors, but this is the classical scenario). For example, Geneon Entertainment releases anime-related albums under RONDO ROBE, and King Records does likewise under Star Child. For a more classic example, Alfa Records released game music under the label G.M.O. (after predecessor YEN Records).
How do we tell which is actual label? For one, you could look at the album scan. Here's one of Sega Game Music Vol.1 (28XA-107) (http://www.vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=1869):
http://www.vgmdb.net/db/assets/covers/1/8/6/9/1869-1191331782.jpg
Alfa Records, the parent company, is displayed prominently at the centre bottom, but notice that the logo on the obi is actually G.M.O. That's the publisher the album should actually be filed under*. As for the inevitable questions asking why we shouldn't just keep things simple and file everything under the parent label, note that other major cataloguing sites like http://www.discogs.com/ specify publishers to sublabel level, so for us to do otherwise would be a lowering of standards.
As you may have noticed, catalogue stems are not sufficient identifiers for sublabels. Both YEN Records and G.M.O. were under Alfa, but YEN had its own stems (YLR, YLC) while G.M.O. did not (their albums shared the ALR, ALC stems with the parent label). This gets even more complicated when you consider the role of distributors.
King Records is a major distributor for other companies, including Konami Music Entertainment and F.I.X. Records. The catalogue stems for these releases (KICA, KICM) are King's, but the publishers printed on the obi are the respective original companies. This is also why such albums sometimes have two different catalogue numbers -- one of them is the internal publisher catalogue. Examples: Tokimeki Memorial Sound Collection, KICA-7644 = LC095 (Konami), and AQUAPLUS VOCAL COLLECTION Vol.1, KICA-1421 = FA027 (F.I.X.). By the way, F.I.X. Records is a trademark of AQUAPLUS, so there are actually three different entities involved here. Both Konami and AQUAPLUS have released albums without the involvement of King Records (and F.I.X.!), so the distinction is important.
That was pretty bloody confusing, so a quick summary of the previous paragraph:
Catalogue stem for a Konami album distributed by King Records: KICA (internal: LC)
Catalogue stem for a self-distributed Konami album: LC
Catalogue stem for an AQUAPLUS album published by F.I.X. Records and distributed by King Records: KICA (internal: FA)
Catalogue stem for a self-distributed AQUAPLUS album: APCD
(Note that AQUAPLUS is actually a software publisher, not a music label)
Unfortunately the choice of catalogue stem can be somewhat arbitrary, since Lantis Records albums distributed by King Records retain their LACA/LACM stems, while Five Records albums distributed by Geneon Entertainment have a VGCD stem (Geneon normally has GNCA). And then there's the special case of the Pony Canyon / Scitron team up where both were listed as publishers for a run of PCCB albums, until Scitron split and got their own stem (SCDC)**.
So how do you tell which is the actual publisher without the aid of an album scan? You can do a Google search. Some Japanese vendor or catalogue sites specify 発売元 (publisher) and 販売元 (distributor), so include those terms in your search. Keep in mind though that some of them may not distinguish between sublabels and parent company either!
Finally, to give you an example overview of all the different companies that may be involved in music publishing for a particular IP (intellectual property) or series, here's the Utawarerumono discography (http://www.aquaplus.co.jp/uta/disc.html) (a game produced by Leaf, which is a division of AQUAPLUS). A summary of that page:
Their game-related albums are published by F.I.X. Records and distributed by King Records;
Their anime-related albums are published by Lantis Records and distributed by King Records;
Their radio albums are published by IMAGICA and distributed by VAP + Tablier Communications.
Keep the nature of these relationships in mind once the publisher database is ready for discography linking. Also, publisher will always take precedence over distributor. An album should not have a linked distributor without a linked publisher; and if the publisher is the same as the distributor, there is no need to specify the latter. If you don't know the distributor, that's fine, just the publisher is enough.
By the way, this discussion has entirely been about major Japanese record labels; life should presumably be much simpler when it comes to doujins and enclosures, since the publishing process is more direct. I'm not too familiar with Western releases, so anyone who's knowledgeable on that aspect is welcome to add to this thread.
* If you look back at the scan of Sega Game Music Vol.1, in the fine print on the obi you can see that the distributor is Warner-Pioneer, the precursor to Warner Music Japan.
** Scitron is now known as Happinet, but the catalogue stems are unchanged.