We originally did treat reprints differently. I think they had their own table with a greatly reduced set of data. The problem that arose from this was that they really couldn't be treated as albums under normal interaction without extra complication to the queries. In other words, they wouldn't show up in album searches, and you couldn't add them to your collection. Over time, the number of fields that might differ between releases has also increased.
So yeah, maybe there's a clever solution somewhere. We'll just have to keep our eye on what happens with new digital releases. So far, it looks like most of the entries in our database have some tracklist changes compared to the original media releases.
Also, maybe we need a field to describe the digital media more specifically -> mp3 vs ogg, 128 vs VBR, etc.
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