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  #1  
Old Dec 26, 2007, 01:04 AM
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Gigablah Gigablah is offline
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Default Label and organization roles

Before I finalize the interface for adding album roles for labels and organizations, I'd like to get some input on the following:

1. Can "publisher" and "manufacturer" be considered equivalent? Or rather, are there instances of releases where the publisher and manufacturer are explicitly different?

2. Should "retailer" be rolled into "distributor", or should they be two separate roles?

3. I currently have the following organization types (note: not album roles) entered:
  • 0 => Music Label (this can be an imprint or a sublabel as well, depending on the inter-organization relationships defined)
  • 1 => Sound Unit / Studio
  • 2 => Game / Software Company
  • 3 => Media / Entertainment Company (this is for the bigger "parent" groups)
  • 4 => Doujin Group / Independent
  • 5 => Others

There will be a table exclusively for describing relationships between labels and organizations; a sound unit can be associated with a parent game studio or media company; a music label can be an imprint of another music label or a software company, and so on.

As with artists, multiple organizations can be assigned to an album with associated roles.

In the near future, "series" and "products" (games, animation) can be associated with these organization entries as well.

Any refinements, changes or additions to suggest?
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  #2  
Old Dec 26, 2007, 03:35 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
1. Can "publisher" and "manufacturer" be considered equivalent? Or rather, are there instances of releases where the publisher and manufacturer are explicitly different?
By "manufacturer," you're talking about the actual disc pressing and everything, right? I was under the impression publishers did that themsleves, but I could be wrong.

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Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
There will be a table exclusively for describing relationships between labels and organizations; a sound unit can be associated with a parent game studio or media company; a music label can be an imprint of another music label or a software company, and so on.
What's the organization relationship table going to look like? I'm guessing each row would have two organizations and a relationship type, and what I'm really trying to get at is what the different kinds of relationships are. Is there anything really beyond sublabel/imprint/subcompany and partnership of some sort?
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  #3  
Old Dec 26, 2007, 08:21 AM
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I think I'd resist the urge to go too complicated.

I don't doubt that there might be some cases where there is a difference between the publisher and the manufacturer, but the publisher is the important bit of information. The name of the factory who pressed the discs is not.

The same could be said for retailer/distributor. In fact, I'm not entirely sure these are needed. Some albums are sold by numerous retailers (e.g. CDJapan, Cocoebiz, Animenation, and any number of Japaense retailers we know nothing about), so I suggest ditching that. If there's one distributor, then maybe that's worth including.

The organization types looks pretty complete. I think there might be one more to add that contains this "messe sanoh" or "sofmap" designation. To be honest, I don't know what they are, or how those 2 companies play a role in the whole process of providing enclosure CDs, but they are prevalent enough to be included (and this might reverse what I said above.)
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Old Dec 26, 2007, 08:25 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CHz View Post
What's the organization relationship table going to look like? I'm guessing each row would have two organizations and a relationship type, and what I'm really trying to get at is what the different kinds of relationships are. Is there anything really beyond sublabel/imprint/subcompany and partnership of some sort?

Sure, there's also "sister brands", "predecessor/successor" (like feel -> Elements Garden), and probably more that I haven't thought of. Each row will have optional start and end dates (like group members for group type artists) so you can specify the time frame for, say, the partnership between Pony Canyon and Scitron.

The main reason to go with a separate relationship table is the ability to define multiple relationship links between a particular organization with various others, really.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel View Post
I think there might be one more to add that contains this "messe sanoh" or "sofmap" designation. To be honest, I don't know what they are, or how those 2 companies play a role in the whole process of providing enclosure CDs, but they are prevalent enough to be included (and this might reverse what I said above.)
They're among the top software/electronics retailers in Japan. Some publishers provide vendor-specific preorder/purchase collectibles and Sofmap seems to be one of the most popular, although there have been instances where arrangements are made with up to five vendors (including Getchu, LAOX, Tora no Ana and so on).

That being said, they're just retailers and not the actual publishers, even though some have their own catalogue number stem.

Edit: Disregard what I just said, apparently they are attributed as publishers for these bonus CDs.

In that case, I suppose we can ditch the "retailer" role but add it to the organization types.
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  #5  
Old Dec 26, 2007, 09:26 AM
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Seconding the Squirrel(tm) comment: stick to the important info.
Doujin albums are often pressed by independent companies, sometimes offshore, but is it really important? Not really.

Inputting album into the database is already a tedious process of some sorts to overcomplicate it further.
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  #6  
Old Dec 26, 2007, 10:10 AM
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That's why the more "tedious" information is completely optional. We're not twisting your arm to provide every piece of information; that's for anal retentive people like me.

But yeah, I suppose I'll be dropping "manufacturer".
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  #7  
Old Dec 26, 2007, 10:23 AM
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I just want to make sure there's enough distinction between "Music Label" and "Media / Entertainment Company", as well as "Sound Unit / Studio" and "Doujin Group / Independent". I can tell the differences, but it seems they could be confused.
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  #8  
Old Dec 27, 2007, 04:15 AM
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A quick rule of thumb would be that media/entertainment companies produce more than just music albums, and a sound unit or studio is a business entity (the "Independent" tag would cover individuals or ad hoc collaborations such as OC Remix, which would technically not be doujin groups).
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  #9  
Old Dec 27, 2007, 05:50 AM
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BTW, will there be some auto-setting capability for the music label? There are a lot of albums that could effectively be done in one pass (e.g. all PCCB albums.)
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  #10  
Old Dec 27, 2007, 06:10 AM
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Yeah, that function should be fairly easy to code. I also plan to add a field for publishers indicating "catalogue stems", so new album additions would auto-suggest a publisher depending on the catnum supplied.
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