Phil, you put forward this notion" As far as the International issue goes, I am starting to think that perhaps that designation should be reserved for pressings that are distributed in more than one country/region, and that different country pressings with the same cat no and barcode details should have their own entries."
I entirely agree, this is exactly where I am at when thinking about how to deal with international category. I also like the idea of adding "multiple country flags to an entry" to signify a release as international rather than list what may obviously be a German, EU or USA pressing as International. We must also remember that whenever we do list anything as international it is essentially a construct of this site and NOT immediately identifiable as international from the data on the CD itself. Well not in the same way say Virgin International or RCA International LPs are. This being the case means that we need to decide just what an international release is according to 45 Worlds and because no-one has a definitive answer to that question this issue plagues cataloguers on the site. I'm sure there is a solution and was close to putting something up in the forum a while back but then ran into some other problems.
Here's one Mojo and Uncut magazines have both domestic (UK) issues and International issues that have different barcodes (generally not listed on this site) but these magazines are all listed as UK issues (except some I listed as international using the barcode as an identifier). To my mind that would make all the cover mounted CDs from both types of issue international but that is not the case they are all listed as UK releases. There are absolutely no differences in these CDs at all. I'll leave it at that for now but there are other weird and wonderful problems that have emerged due to our creation of this catch all category.
Hi guys, I think this one should stay as US. To my knowledge, Sundazed didn't (and don't) have any overseas licensing deals, probably because all their product is licensed from other companies (this one from Warner's) for US release only, so if it was made available here, it would have been via an import distributor, and so it wouldn't qualify as an Australian "release" as such.
As far as the International issue goes, I am starting to think that perhaps that designation should be reserved for pressings that are distributed in more than one country/region, and that different country pressings with the same cat no and barcode details should have their own entries. Even that may not be enough to pacify some people, but it is simple fact that, particularly in the early years of CDs, pressings from, say, Germany were released not just in Germany, but also the rest of the Continent, the UK, the US, Australasia, anywhere and everywhere. That declined as more countries got their own factories, but it still happens to some extent, particularly with back catalogue, and I think that practice might be increasing again slightly with the declining sales of CDs and companies find it less worthwhile to press discs in their own countries and just take whatever stock they need from one of their larger overseas affiliates; in recent years, Sony here in Australia had been pressing some Kinks and Presley reissues, but the most recent ones from those artists (EVERYBODY'S IN SHOW-BIZ and THAT'S THE WAY IT IS) have been European imports. Like it or not, a large part of the CD market in the past has been international, and I think that will continue to some degree.
I think I've suggested before that the ability to add multiple country flags to an entry, as Rate Your Music has, would be helpful, but OC and others would have to advise whether that's possible from a coding point of view.
I am also happy to leave it as USA but it is not necessarily technically right. I'm just making the point that if we in Australia gathered all the evidence on CDs released here from around the world and made them International no-one would be able to find anything and nothing would make sense. I also agree that anything with Made in Australia on it should be listed as Australian. When I've tried to add these types of CDs to, in particular, a European release there is always a hell of a to-do. Because when it gets down to it no-one (well hardly anyone) likes seeing there region's CDs being Internationalised it takes away ownership and recognition of where it it is originally from.
Hi Lee, I am happy for this one to stay as U.S.A. The only ones that I object to are ones that have made in Australia or marketing/distribution details that are peculiar to Australia having to be entered as International just because bar code and cat # match like the first CD I entered here
Bought in Australia I presume Jasper. Phill could probably find Australian release details and then we could make this International but who cares it is better listed as a USA release. However, the rules on country of release need to be changed otherwise the Australian contingent on this site could potentially Internationalise about 60% (maybe more) of all the CDs on this site. Then we'd have most of the CDs on the site listed in a way that no-one would be able find them to add to their collection. This one may well be an import but it also may not either way it would be stupid to list it as International at any time in my book.Just something for the MODS to think about when they cast their mind's to global issues.