making release country a tag, and therefore non-exclusive of others, sounds like it would work:
it would in fact also be appropriate to lpcat (vinyl albums), once the great multi/trans-national musicmegacorpse conglommerglutination got (im)properly under way...
- and it could presumably be set to display the current mini flags, which people do seem to like -
- and the coding for tags has also been written by the possibly mythical creator cat;
- and cataloguing (entering) cds by artist - title - label - cat# - barcode would be using indica that are on the cds, and on their printed inlay cards+inserts/digipacks/card sleeves - so it wouldn't demand expert knowledge/inspirational interpretation of auspices, bones and internal organs, neither. . .
I'm beginning to think the answer to all this is (deep breath) - get rid of the country field completely! Just use the combination of label, catalogue number and barcode to separate entries, with countries of release to be stated in the comments (NOT the notes, because some countries can receive copies of the same title with the same label/cat no/barcode made in different countries at different times, e.g. Australia getting CD's originally from England and/or other European countries, but later Aus-manufactured copies).
Looking at Warner Music Group's website earlier tonight, apparently they have subsidiaries, affiliates and licensees in over 50 countries, but some countries and regions were noticeably absent. e.g Central America, West Indies, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, which makes me wonder how (if?) those regions are supplied with physical stock - all from US? Mexico supplying Central America? Similarly, all three majors (Warners, Universal, Sony) have Middle East and North Africa divisions headquartered in Lebanon, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi respectively; Discogs has a couple of Universal MENA discs entered as "Middle East", but those are probably not quite correct, and they could well have been distributed in, say, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco too (there weren't any images on those entries showing where they were manufactured, but even if there were, the countries stated wouldn't necessarily be the main or only release country). Warners have a separate subsidiary in Israel ( haven't checked the other two companies yet) - could Israeli-made discs (is there even a factory there?) potentially be distributed in the US too, seeing as New York City is the largest Jewish city in the world? I think I've mentioned before that Universal has a division in the Netherlands which co-ordinates the international domestic release of European-manufactured product.
Anyway, my point is that the majors' consolidation of their operations in some of these regions makes it harder to determine a single country of release in many cases. It should NOT be assumed that "manufactured in EU" (or any region) means "released ONLY in that region" (although Japan is largely an exception to that, as their catalogue numbering systems tend to be drastically different from the rest of the world); this has been the case since the introduction of CD's 37 years ago, and it's about time that certain people on this site woke up to that FACT.
As well as using comments to indicate the release countries on each entry (and I suspect that in many cases, we would end up with only 3-4 entries for each label/cat no/barcode combination, covering Americas/Caribbean/other US territories, Europe/RoW, and Japan, so there wouldn't be too much duplication), perhaps tags should be used too. e.g. Release Country = wherever, so those who want to find all discs released in their country can just search under the appropriate tag.
so what are the defining characteristics of audio (including music, dramatised performances, dramatised readings, sound effects, whale & bird song, etc.) cds ?
some are or have been published by small companies for essentially the local country/countries/trading bloc.
they may hold the rights to sell further afield (and may not), but either don't do so, or it is only done if a wholesaler/distributor in a country or trading bloc picks up the publisher's catalogue.
some are or have been published by large national companies for essentially the local country/countries/trading bloc and for sale anywhere else in the world they hold the rights to do so, whether exclusively or not, but may not do much of this open market business.
some are or have been published by multi- & trans-national megacorpses in one or more of the territorial distribution areas they carve up sound recordings rights into;
these cds, any one megacorpse may have manufactured, or had manufactured for them, in one or more factories more or less locally to each of these distribution territories -
and the number of these distinct territories has shrunk, and the size of each of them increased accordingly, depending mostly upon predominant language blocs, legal requirements of major countries and trading blocs, economies of large scale manufacture, distribution costs, especially trans-oceanic distribution costs (whether by air freight or wet containerised shipping).
it looks rather as though "international" should not be an alternative ruling out countries, but an optional addition;
does the same apply to "europe" ?
to "north america"?
to "south america" ?
to "australasia" ?
to "south-east asia, including malaysia, indonesia, melanesia & micronesia" (is this the right split?) ?
to "india (& what else)" ?
to "southern africa" ?
to "north africa & the near east" ?
to "west africa" ?
to "china" ?
- i'm asking all of these, cos i don't actually know what the major territories the musicmegacorpses currently split the prerecorded cd world into.
It gets better! Here is the EU release and here is the Argentinian version and guess what? Their barcodes, labels and cat#s all match. Now we have the daunting prospect of having two different international versions of this CD on the the site none of which will be much use to anyone for cataloging or record keeping purposes. Only five countries of release looked at and we now potentially have two different international releases. Preposterous - this is why this system doesn't work.
Given that the USA and Mexican releases have the same cat# and barcode (see here and here) it is by our reckoning an international release. Just another example of why the international category is not so great. CDs manufactured in a country for that market are not deemed to be from that country but rather international due to matching cat#s and barcodes. Surely we can use the "specific market (country of release)" criteria here instead of lumping everything with matching other data into the bottomless pit of partially identified CDs in the international category.