I completely agree with slholzer; this and other discographies are simply not set up and cannot easily be set up to show where in the world the same record was sold at different times, as interesting as this may be.
One more example: Chinese phonograph history happens to start with a French Pathé record. Pathé 32606, "Joyeux Rires", was produced in France and, in my view, is a French record and nothing else. An enterprising Frenchman brought it to Shanghai, played it or a fee to large audiences, and, lo and behold, by 1918 that same, very popular record was sold by a Chinese subsidiary of Pathé with Chinese labels (http://www.capsnews.org/apn2008-1.htm - audio file here - starts at 3:05, transcript and translation here). I'd argue that 1918 is the time when this database should start its history of Chinese Pathé, not with the more or less random records from the French Pathé catalog that were imported to China before then. Moreover, it makes no sense to backdate that Chinese release of the laughing record just because it was released in France several years before 1918.
If you want to capture the entire history of discs in every area of the world, you probably aren't going to do it with a single data field no matter how hard you try. You might begin to get there if you have a field for where the record is pressed, one for where it is recorded, and a nice roomy one for all the places where it is known to have been sold. None of these definitively cover the rather squishy notion of nationality, however, nor do they collectively manage to accomplish it. There are other factors, some of them not readily definable, that enter into the equation, that make us conclude that the central locus of any given label or disc is a given place, a country.
It is a telling point that when the designers of the template for entries in this database put it together they did not create fields for those other items of discernible fact but immediately incorporated a field to contain this one paramount but debatable quantity. If this single field must do the work of all those other non-existent fields, then perhaps there should be no single-country listings: as scrough says, far-reaching consequences. But does it really have to do that?
I can readily make distinctions between a record made in England for an Australian store for distribution in Australia (i.e. Bon Marche), a record pressed in Australia for distribution in Australia and environs (post-1925 Australian HMV), and a record made in England targeted at domestic audiences that happens to get imported into Australia. The first two are essentially Australian by orientation, the third is not. Even the trickiest nationality issue seems to have been adequately dealt with by the use of import and export tags rather than multiple-country listings. At worst, we need to get on the same page about which treatment applies to any given disc.
Stepping back to scrough's concern about not hiding history, there is the matter of so-called "releases" achieved by the introduction of records into new markets by enterprising free agents. The database entry template only provides three fields for a date: one year, one month, one day, constituting one complete date when taken together. (Let's interpret it as release date, which I think is what's intended.) With the current system, we can only manage to even roughly capture the date when a given disc penetrated to each part of the world by giving the same disc multiple entries: one for each country where the disc eventually went on sale. It might be doable, but not, I think, without doing untold violence to fundamental principles on which the system seems to be based. The ambition is laudable, but I think it exceeds the capability of the system as it currently is.
@ Xiphophilos: ...there's nothing I can see that would mark it as an export issue meant for Australia or anything else that would show that it was imported to Australia except that it's now in an Australian collection. Even the Mecolico mechanical copyright stamp on the B side is British, as far as I know.
But that demonstrates the problem exactly. HMVs were IMPORTED into Australia 1905-1925 by an agent, not a division of HMV, so have no change in label or copyright stamps from their UK source. Do we want to hide the pre-1925 78rpm history of discs in Australia because they were imported by an agent rather than issued by a record company? This decision has far reaching consequences for all country listings, and going back to the 1900s.
"Bon Marché" was produced in England specifically for sale in Bon Marché department stores in Australia. There it makes sense for me to call these Australian releases because they were simply not released in England but only in Australia (just as some records, for example, were produced by Beka in Germany, but only sold in foreign countries).
I wonder if it makes sense to even use "country of sale" to determine whether a record should be listed under that country or not.
In the case of Australia, we would then have to double-list a lot of British pressings before 1926 as both UK and Australian issues. With B 1814, in particular, which has now been switched from Australia to the UK, there's nothing I can see that would mark it as an export issue meant for Australia or anything else that would show that it was imported to Australia except that it's now in an Australian collection. Even the Mecolico mechanical copyright stamp on the B side is British, as far as I know.
For that reason alone we should probably mark as Australian only records that are clearly marked as Australian pressings, starting in Sept. 1925. Isn't that what we already do with, say, Indian or New Zealand recordings?
Regarding B1814 - Sorry about that. Thanks for pointing out that mistake.
Regarding Aus HMV - apart from the factory info I haven't really looked into it. Issue and release dates for Australian pressed records would start from September, 1925 onwards. E.A. 71 has the same label design, and is apparently from 1927, so I guess this one could've been released any time between 1925-1927?
The site asks for initial release dates, not pressing dates, otherwise we would have massive complications with each change of label style, and we also try to use 'country of sale' no matter where manufactured. For example, we have HMV UK labelled records dated prior to the 1912 HMV label introduction, because that's when they were released by Gram Co, and we don't limit the earlier Gram Co releases to 1907 when the UK pressing plant opened. But I don't see an easy answer here within the limitations of what information the site allows. Perhaps we need an Import classification - the B 1814 entry is definitely one.
I probably should have used the word 'pressing' instead of 'release'.
Records were definately imported prior to the Australian factory opening. There's no argument there. HMV began record production, in Australia, in Spetember, 1925. As this record is an Australian pressing, it could not have been released at an earlier date. I would presume, much like Columbia records, that UK catalogue series' were used prior to and along side the Australian ones.
But is there any evidence that HMV only started 'releasing' records in Australia when the factory opened? Had they been imported before, so 'released' prior to 1925? In particular, this catalogue number is a UK one, not an Australian one, so did the factory continue to press records that had been imported earlier and became popular? I think we need to be very careful about allocating a 1925 cut-off for all Australian HMV releases just because that's when the factory started. More research is needed - so over to our Aussie members ;) but let me point you to this - Feb 1900?
User JLC135 comments:
The date for this one [was listed as Feb. 1918, now deleted. Mod.] is way too early for an Australian release.
The factory was officially opened in January, 1926, and I think, like Columbia, they were most likely in production for some months prior - so I think the earliest date possible would be 1925.