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Old May 13, 2018, 04:54 AM
Rrolack Rrolack is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 393
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I may not have been sufficiently coherent in my original post. I'll give this another try below.

If we look at vgmdb's Release Type field, it is defined as follows:


Commercial

A commercial album released by the official rights holder.

Doujin/Fanmade

Any album released by a doujin circle, amateur or cover group (or individual).

This should take into account the status of the group at the time of release; for example, an amateur group that turns professional should still have their earlier releases labeled as Doujin/Indie.


Now, suppose we encounter an album which is made by an amateur group. By our own definition, that album is Doujin/Indie. But suppose that album also receives a "mechanical license," which Loudr defines as "a license that gives you permission to make and distribute copies of your recording of another person's copyrighted song (a.k.a, your cover song)." The convention of this site is to designate such licensed releases as Commercial.

I'm wondering if this convention is both incorrect and unhelpful.

The reason it would be incorrect is that an artist who obtains a mechanical license is not the official rights holder. For an example to illustrate: it seems clear that if someone is the official rights holder, they are authorized to grant mechanical licenses for that work to other artists. An artist who merely receives a mechanical license for a work cannot then grant licenses for that work to others, making that artist clearly not the official rights holder.

The reason it would be unhelpful is because when searching for soundtracks, users generally don't want to wade through a sea of amateur releases. The Doujin/Indie is what allows users to accomplish this goal. But with the current convention, that goal is no longer satisfied.


So what I'm asking is: should we apply the submission guidelines as they are written, meaning only albums released by the official rights holder (and not those which received a mechanical license) should be marked as Commercial?

Last edited by Rrolack; May 13, 2018 at 07:43 AM.
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