JOY-391: The TRIFORCE of BASS (reprint)

[Myrkul]

I don't understand the meaning of all the re-releases on Joypad Records...

Why should we pay more than the previous releases that are still available ?
This album is 7$ on Bandcamp, 10$ on iTunes.

Also, please do not make digital release reprints of digital releases... There's no sence in that since there's nothing new. Though you can add in the notes that the album was re-released by Joypad Records on the xx/20xx.

[GermanSeabass]

Joypad is a distribution and licensing service. We are releasing music in an official, licensed, legal capacity - something that Bandcamp does not do. We put up music on iTunes, and Amazon, and every other major digital marketplace.

It doesn't look like VGMdb accounts for the fact that albums (especially indie/doujin albums) can be re-released, even digitally. If you don't want me to add our catalog, let me know. Otherwise, I'll continue to add our releases in the spirit of having an accurate representation of our content on VGMdb.

Thanks!

[Myrkul]

Feel free to add "new" albums, or add some infos in the notes in existing albums you release under your label (ex: re-released by Joypad Records on the xx/20xx)

But as i said above: do not post digital releases from your catalog that existed before in digital form only while they have no new content. I'll reject these entries.

[GermanSeabass]

So, it's essentially impossibly to keep our label page ( http://vgmdb.net/org/1017 ) up-to-date because it's preferred not to add digital re-releases, even if significant parts of the information may be different (release date, catalog number, UPC, track lengths, album cover) - mainly due to it being another digital release of the same album?

[LiquidAcid]

VGMdb is not here to promote/advertise your label.

[GermanSeabass]

Nor am I here to promote or advertise anything. I'm here because I believe in contributing accurate information to the de facto resource for gamemusic. I'm just trying to get a sense of how you guys prefer to receive and categorize everything.

[LiquidAcid]

Then your focus should not be your label page. Concerning how to present information, I think Myrkul explained this well enough.

[Lashiec]

Seems to me the child album scheme isn't flexible enough for what GermanSeabass wants to do. I always found the system a bit lacking compared to MusicBrainz release groups when you have to deal with all the special cases that can't be considered reprints. A good example of this problem is the Black Mesa Soundtrack, for which Bandcamp, the free edition and iTunes, have different tracklists and release dates.

But regarding this particular reprint, I don't really understand why does it even exist. I thought GameChops, the original label under which it was published, also licensed the music from their original authors.

[Myrkul]

I kept that entry for a while to have a few reactions.

There's no "set in stone" rule about reprints, though so far we judged digital reprints of digital releases were not needed.

[Secret Squirrel]

What about something like this for digital re-releases?

http://vgmdb.net/album/34534

note: reverted edit. Was:

GameChops (distributed by Bandcamp, Joypad Records)

[Myrkul]

Seems the start of a great idea, though there are a few problems:
- Joypad Records is a publisher, not a distributor.
- What if the different publishers/distributors release the album at a different date ? (for now it seems all of them will use the date from the entry, generally the earliest release)

[Efendija]

While it's normal to sometimes have multiple labels linked as publishers because of, well, some joint publishing project, I got the impression we usually specify distributor if it's the only one; if there are multiple distributors (and usually for digital releases), we don't link even a single one (because it's not an exclusive distributor - e.g. I remember some album had iTunes linked as the distributor at first but it turned out it's not only on iTunes so the 'distributed by' link was removed).
Anyway, if we're starting to add multiple distributors, it could get a bit chaotic, I know there are some albums that could get 'distributed by iTunes, Amazon, Beatport, emusic, Junodownload, Qobuz' at once, but then again it would be fair...

Back to this album, there are some problems (that's only my view though): Joypad is a publisher, not a distributor, e.g. they leave the distributing to iTunes (and perphaps to some other distributors); Gamechops & Joypad have different release dates, it looks a bit strange to have Joypad linked under the same date when that's not really true. And Joypad assigns their own catalogue numbers so having Joypad release linked without cat. no. also seems a bit off. Sure, everything about Joypad reprint is specified in the notes already but from a distributor/publisher link perspective it doesn't seem so good.

[Secret Squirrel]

Actually, if joypad assigns its own catalog numbers, we might have to consider allowing digital "reprints". But I wonder what kind of other problems that would open up.

[GermanSeabass]

Really excellent ideas.

Do you guys consider storefronts "distributors?" I'm asking since we and most other labels technically do the distribution of content. Bandcamp is in that weird in-between spot where it's acting as a store, publisher, and distributor. Perhaps it's just a syntactic thing-- but I could foresee the potential messiness if we verbosely specify all vendors: Published by Joypad Records (distributed by iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, emusic, etc.)

Musicbrainz and other databases keep track of albums and releases separately. Essentially, an album can be re-released (or reprinted, for physical mediums) under another label, with a new product code, as a new version (10th Anniversaey Rerelease, Special Edition, whatever). The album info, credited performing artists, an tracklist usually remain the same. Release-specific information (album cover, catalog #, UPC/EAN) are different.

Just throwing out some things I uncovered when settin up our internal systems and data hierarchy.