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| CD Albums: Time To Bite The Bullet Pt. 1 The Problem |
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| 20th May 2017, 1:36 AM | #1 REPORT | |
 | Lee Wrecker If you can't dig me, you can't dig nothin' Member since Nov 2013 2283 Points | I think it's time to have a good hard look at CD Albums World and work on some ways to improve it. As difficult as it may be I think this world needs a complete overhaul. I've watched the number of entries over the past month and have noted that they're slow coming in compared to other areas of the site and amount to about half as many as the LPs area of the site. Surely, given that CDs have been the main source of marketed music in the past 30 years the slow number of entries here on the site should tell us something is wrong. So, I'll start with the artist homepages and work through some other issues till we get to the dreaded international category. Quite simply the homepages are a mess and extremely difficult navigate or find particular CDs. This mainly due to two things. Firstly, the listings are reversed chronologically to present the most recent releases first and secondly there are no divisions between countries or regions. Everything from everywhere is situated in one long list from most recent to oldest. Have a look at The Beatles page to see what I mean. It's not till page 4 here that a copy of Abbey Road appears. Perhaps we need to reconsider this layout and put in country/region divisions before the homepages become completely unmanageable. Or list albums in chronological or catalogical order as per the artist so the pages have some logical sequence. Many of you may know that I have misgivings about the accuracy of the Discogs site but their homepages are much better organised and easy to use than what we are currently doing in CD albums world. Could we borrow some ideas from there? User entries in CD Albums are still relatively slow and I put this down to the difficulty of the entry process. Not that it is hard to enter a CD it is in fact quite easy but it is however hard to get it right. What I'm driving at here is the problems that the international category causes for those posting CDs. This issue has seen many members desert the CD Albums section of the site after entering a small sample of their collections. The main problem here stems from the fact that a poster can correctly enter a CD as per the details at hand but then find their good work has been altered due to the impenetrable logic that is associated with the international category. Here we have two completely opposite interpretations of the guidelines running concurrently and depending on who moderates the entries or comments on it no matter what you have done it is wrong. In general I believe that most people don't like being told that they're wrong or having their hard work changed for some arbitrary reasons that often defy logic. The common answer to this problem on the site is along the lines of "bash it in and we'll sort it out later" but this attitude is not one that catters like. They like more certainty about what they're doing and the exodus of many from CD Albums is testimony to that. So there is definitely a problem. To explain what the problem is though we need to examine our guidelines and there are two ways CDs can be made international on the site and neither are adequate. Here's a summary of the methods in use the "identical" CD is in short Same CD + Multiple Markets = International and the other is matching barcodes Matching Barcodes + Different Countries/Regions = International Same CD + Multiple Markets = International is very difficult to prove for catters outside the market of manufacture. In Australia for instance I would hazard a guess that roughly 60-70% of mainstream releases have been available here over time. To further complicate things if a release has been successful a local copy may also be produced. Sometime with the same "identical" details and sometimes not. So is one CD an Australian CD for that market: yes. Is the other a USA or EU release: yes. Are they all international: yes. Are they in fact "identical: no. Here's my apparently globetrotting Australian CD of the Beastie Boys that still has no matches on the site. Conversely here's my copy of the Buzzcocks Chronology which has an identical UK equivalent but is listed as Australian. Surely, both should be one or the other? See Pt. 2 Where to From Here Edited by Lee Wrecker on 20th May 2017, 2:25 AM |
| 20th May 2017, 1:39 AM | #2 REPORT | |
| Lee Wrecker If you can't dig me, you can't dig nothin' Member since Nov 2013 2283 Points | Pt. 2 Where to From Here Using the same barcode as an indicator of an international release is equally unreliable as matching barcodes may not have matching catalogue numbers. This European Otis Redding CD bought in Australia (international release on the strength of that anyone) and this local copy with an abbreviated cat# show. So this method will continually throw mismatches in the finer details that don't warrant the two releases being on the same page. So where to from here? Well firstly we need to come up with a better method of determining country/region of release. Currently, my preference favours what a catter may have at hand the information on the CD and the market it was produced for. Along the lines of this; 1. Made In Country/Region + Marketed in Country/Region = Listed as from that Country/Region 2. Made In Country/Region + Marketed in a different Country/Region = Listed as from a different Country/Region (ie. EU made UK releases) 3. Made In Country/Region + Marketed in multiple Countries/Regions = Listed as from Country/Region but available in other countries/regions by selecting from an international list of countries contained in a dropdown menu on the listing page. You'll notice that I have avoided the specifics of cat#s, sec. cat#s, alternate publishers, label owners and the need to research the same before entering a CD in an effort to simplify the process. I'm sure there will be plenty wrong with my suggestions but we need to start somewhere before it's too late. Feel free to dissect, criticise, comment or contribute to this thread . Cheers, Lee Edited by Lee Wrecker on 20th May 2017, 2:27 AM |
| 20th May 2017, 3:04 AM | #3 REPORT | |
 | Alenko Member since Oct 2015 2899 Points | Well Lee, it is hard to expect everybody who is contributing here to actually know exactly what they are doing. I have been moderator of much bigger site for more than 10 years now and going through approximately 160,000 corrections there, I have learned that teaching users how to properly contribute to the site is a very hard job. Being moderator means also to be a teacher, to tell users what they are doing wrong. Or correct I wish there was a correction history here, I wish there was a correction queue here visible to all the users. I am not sure that everybody who is a moderator here understands complexity of adding CD releases. I joined here for one reason, to add complete scans of the CD albums. I'm not even touching other formats. I think this site has a great layout and it's sad how many releases here don't even have cover image. When it comes to international releases, that category should be removed. In my opinion it has been abused. For example, somebody adds EU CD, complete set of scans, but the place issued is International because discogs lists same CD, label, catalog number, barcode as Peruvian issue. I am not interested what other sites list. I am only interested in what is added here, including info and cover scans. If Peruvian issue exists, maybe additional scans should be added first before changing it into International Also, where you can buy CD shouldn't mean that the CD was issued in the market where it was sold. Where CD was manufactured also doesn't mean all the time it was issued there. Many of Columbia European CDs were manufactured in Austria, because the CD factory is there. Croatia Records manufactures its CDs in Austria as well. All of them have Made in Austria. Not Austrian issues though There is a difference between place issued and place distributed. We should not add International to albums that were sold in Australia, for example, even if they were sold under regular price. I'm sorry my friends from down under, but it seems to me you get a lot of imports (CDs that have no mentioning of Australia anywhere on the release, hence not Australian issues), even if they have regular price. Those albums were distributed in Australia, not issued there. I think we should stick with what information is available on the CD instead of trying to find answer on any other site on the internet. Almost every CD has information that will tell us correct place issued. Maybe solution is to be able to add additional places issued and get rid of International category. One more thing, several of my entries have labels changed by who knows who (can't see correction history). Unfortunately every change was incorrect. |
| 20th May 2017, 4:37 AM | #4 REPORT | |
 | PhilMH SUBS ● Member since Jan 2012 1058 Points |
Alenko wrote:
There is a difference between place issued and place distributed. We should not add International to albums that were sold in Australia, for example, even if they were sold under regular price. I'm sorry my friends from down under, but it seems to me you get a lot of imports (CDs that have no mentioning of Australia anywhere on the release, hence not Australian issues), even if they have regular price. Those albums were distributed in Australia, not issued there. How many more times do I have to explain this? The "imports" that Lee and I and others frequently refer to are those that were distributed in Australia by the Australian branches of the multinational companies, so for all intents and purposes they were Australian releases as well as UK/Europe/whatever, included in (historically) the Platterlog catalogue's weekly new release sheets as releases from those companies, and (currently) on the Australian Record Industry Association's website which shows the new releases each Friday (as well as on their subscription newsletter, which I don't get). A current example is that the ARIA site a couple of weeks ago listed the Ella Fitzgerald centennial collection on Verve as a new release through Universal that week; go to a shop and what you find is the European pressing. I think I have also used before the example of Universal's predecessor PolyGram releasing in Australia discs that were made in South Korea in packages that were outwardly European, with catalogue numbers and barcodes that were the same as Europe. I don't want to imagine what sort of reception you would get from Universal or the other companies if you tried to tell them that these aren't Australian releases. Both of those examples most definitely qualify as International, as would a lot of others, especially in the 80s when a lot of countries had few, if any, CD factories. (I might just mention that a lot of CBS, later Sony, Austrian pressings were released in Australia too). I suspect that a lot of entries listed on CD World (and both LPs and CDs on Classical World) currently listed as Europe (and a lesser amount of US pressings) would in fact be International releases. Unfortunately there are very few CDs which list all the countries where the company's affiliates were releasing the item - in a lot of cases, there wouldn't have been room! Many of us here in Australia have decades of experience as buyers (and in the case of member The_Vinyl_Junkie, as a retailer) and have seen plenty of overseas pressings in regular, non-"import" record shops, and we shouldn't have to be subject to an at times near-impossible burden of "proof" to satisfy some of the more Northern Hemisphere-centric contributors that a particular item was released here. Having said all that, Lee's final suggestion above, a disc being listed as from a particular region but having the ability to list multiple countries of release, is the closest to my feelings on how to resolve the issue, though I'm not sure my Korean-pressed discs would fit neatly into that. If the particular CD wasn't already listed, I would most likely add it as Australia, and then other countries' pressings with the same catalogue number and barcode combination could be added by selecting the appropriate flag. |
| 20th May 2017, 11:55 AM | #5 REPORT | |
 | TopPopper Member since Mar 2013 2612 Points | Hi Lee. I've read through your posts, which began "this world needs a complete overhaul", and braced myself. To be honest, having gone through all your comments, I think the issues you raise boil down to just two things - the way artist discographies are sorted, and the country designation issues. I don't consider that amending either of these would constitute a complete overhaul of the whole site, but hey-ho. I agree the artist discographies are not perfect, but also remember, we are bound by what's out there and what was issued - we can't just have some ideal discography. It has to be correct, whether it's ugly or beautiful. I have often thought there might be a case for only listing the first edition of a given album, and having all the re-issues, and different editions as some sort of sub-menu. I think there might be some merit in that, but that's about as much thought as I've given it, and I've no doubt at all that further complications would be raised. Sort buttons would be nice - so users could sort the discograhy by date, cat number, country etc... Which comes on to the country designation thing. It's very difficult to see a clear way forward. I just bought a Robyn Hitchcock CD from Amazon, the day it was released. I live in the UK, I bought it on Amazon UK, but everything about it makes it look like a US product, which is how I listed it. Is it for sale in the UK? Yes. Is it available in other countries? Yes. So, it's really a global release - as is everything nowadays. What can we do, other than use the most realistic option? So far I've not heard a viable solution, so we have to live with things as they are. I don't think you can set hard and fast rules. For instance, your own ideas mention the place the product was manufactured, but then disregard this issue when deciding on the country (which, incidentally, I would agree with). We just return to the place of marketing - and so I refer back to my Robyn Hitchcock CD. I got reminders from his website, went to another UK website and ordered it - I could have done the same had I lived in any country. It will be listed for sale on Amazon Germany, Canada, wherever. Everything's international in practice. I think we need to just live with things as they are. Let's not lose site of the great things about 45 Worlds, by just focussing in on these imperfections. It's still a wonderful resource, even if it's not 100 percent perfect. 95 percent is good enough (as I often tell my missus!). |
| 20th May 2017, 7:04 PM | #6 REPORT | |
 | Dr Doom SUBS I wanna eat an artichoke once in a while Member since Feb 2008 25474 Points Administrator | Some good points being made here and although we think things are working OK we can certainly make improvements. I'm happy to say that these improvements will be coming over the next couple of months. We've been working on stuff over the last few months which doesn't really have visible results (member unification and database streamlining) but now that they are 99% complete we're about to looking at design improvements for each world so you should see some changes coming up pretty soon.  |
| 20th May 2017, 8:12 PM | #7 REPORT | |
 | Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3774 Points Moderator | Good stuff. In the meantime, I'd say if the CD says: "Made In The EU", it's European. (Unless it's Italian, with an SIAE mark, in which case it's Italian... unless that happens to be accompanied by other marks such as BIEM etc.... in which case, it's back to Europe again  )Just go "continental", I do not believe in "international" myself, so never use that designation. (Life was so much simpler in the vinyl age, where you had purpose made exports and the like!) |
| 21st May 2017, 1:47 AM | #8 REPORT | |
 | mister_tmg Also on 78rpm Member since Apr 2012 1118 Points | It is annoying that an artist's CDs are all lumped in together, not categorised by country. With Petula Clark (whose releases I have been adding), there are hundreds from different countries (I often go by the address of the record company). Her vinyl albums are easily sorted by country and thus easier to find, and more digestible. Maybe it would be good to have an option to 'view year/decade'? One good thing about Discogs is that you can link releases on different formats. I suppose linking 78s from here and 45s from 45cat could be tricky, but there are many albums here issued on tape, CD and vinyl. At present you can't easily see all formats of an album together, as on Discogs. Also, it's incredibly annoying adding another format with exactly the same label information when you have to copy and paste all the data again. I am finding this site useful and it seems more 'user-friendly' than Discogs on the whole. Oh, and it would be really good to do more detailed searches, i.e. a track by a specific artist - I can look up 'Strangers in the Night' which Petula recorded, but the results would include tons of versions by other artists. Lastly, it would be good to allow us to edit Notes or other data if we are the user who entered it originally. |
| 21st May 2017, 2:45 AM | #9 REPORT | |
| RogerFoster To ignore is human, to follow is divine. Member since Jul 2014 3084 Points | Oh Dear. It does seem that our Australian contingent are very concerned about this issue. Personally, in retrospect, after having entered all my CDs here under various "national" categories, I would now designate EVERYTHING as "International". As far as I can see everything is/was potentially distributed/released everywhere in the CD era. When I was entering my CD collection last year there were a number of releases that I assumed were only available in The UK until it was pointed out to me that they were also officially "released" in exactly the same format in other parts of the world (i.e. they were "International"). How is anybody supposed to know this?? One of the first set of CDs I contributed to on this site would have been The Complete Motown Singles Collections ... this is the first one in the series. To begin with these were definitely "US" issues, but then the powers at the British distributors of Motown decided that they wanted to have them "officially" released in The UK (probably because a large proportion of the sales of these collections were in Britain and they wanted a bit of the glory) and from around Volume 5 (1965) onwards these CD collections had an "official" release in The UK. However they are exactly the same release in The UK and The US, so they should really be "International" (although personally I think of them as US Imports). Again ... how is anyone supposed to know this? It seems to me that an important factor here is that 45Worlds is an extension of 45Cat and that the underlying database for both sites probably has the same structure (I worked for 25 years as a database designer so maybe I have a better insight into this than others). In other words, a lot of the assumptions/beliefs/contentions/facts about the worldwide distribution of 45 records have been applied to CD Albums. Back in the good old days of 7" singles (1960s/70s) it was easy to say in which country they were "released", and although US releases were readily available in The UK from around 1969/70 onwards they were always considered to be "imports". In the CD era these distinctions about where CDs are distributed/issued are very unclear. So ... I would suggest scrapping any "national" category (probably impossible due to the underlying database structure of 45Worlds) or alternatively ignoring these "national" categories and introducing new sorting facilities for the individual artists. Incidentally, I have similar issues with Magazines ... but they can wait for the moment!! |
| 21st May 2017, 3:05 AM | #10 REPORT | |
| mister_tmg Also on 78rpm Member since Apr 2012 1118 Points | CD singles often charted low down as "imports" from abroad prior to the UK issue. I think in the later years of the CD single, the release charting in the UK was often the same product across Europe. I suppose import chart entries were a uniquely 90s/00s phenomena, often summer Ibiza hits in demand. |
| 21st May 2017, 5:15 AM | #11 REPORT | |
 | The_Vinyl_Junkie SUBS My body is on the diminishing streak. Member since Dec 2011 8103 Points Moderator | The CD Albums are becoming difficult to check when you start looking at the releases for artists like “The Beatles” where there are 14 pages of entries with no obvious sorting. The filter CD options does not have a “CD Title” field which would definitely help. Personally I would prefer the CD Albums to be set the same as all the other “Worlds” recorded formats. The “Europe” and “International” countries are becoming a nightmare. We have so many with “Manufactured in XXX” where the X’s are either EU, Austria or Germany that get officially released by the major company in countries outside of Europe. Here we get one member insisting it be entered as Europe whereas another member wants International since their country is outside of Europe. Should “Europe” and “International” options remain there needs to be an option “Add Another Country” which would open three extra fields for the contributing member: a) Country of Release; b)Release Date (for that country); c) Cat # (as used for that country by the record company). These would need to have a “Note” detailing the official release publication for that country. Let us not forget that an initial entry for a title would be “your country” since you don’t know where else in the world it may have been released. Until somebody from another country in the world has the same title, barcode, etc, then “your country” would be edited to one of the two multi national options. |
| 21st May 2017, 2:47 PM | #12 REPORT | |
| PhilMH SUBS ● Member since Jan 2012 1058 Points | I would also be wary of designating any CD that says "Made in EU" as a European release, unless it's by a major artist on a major label and likely to be Europe-wide. Isn't there some sort of EU directive that if any item (whatever it is, no necessarily music) is made in an EU member country, then the packaging has to say "Made in EU"? That notation very frequently appears on product from Ace/Kent, who I feel are most likely to be officially UK-only releases, as they don't have any continental licensees as far as I know. (The same principle applies to Ace/Kent's earlier LP issues that specifically say made in France or Germany; it's not unknown for those to be entered as the release countries at this site, and also at Discogs, which also has a guideline saying that the country of manufacture is not necessarily the country of release). Also, it's hard to imagine a release by a relatively minor artist from, say, Spain, whose CD says "Made in EU" being made available in Scandinavia! Anyway, I'll await the improvements that the good Doctor speaks of with baited breath - and I apologize for losing my rag a bit yesterday. |
| 21st May 2017, 3:05 PM | #13 REPORT | |
| TopPopper Member since Mar 2013 2612 Points | There's a tension in the system, as the regulations treat EU as if it were a country - "Made in EU". But we don't - and we don't want such a vague designation, so we try and identify the particular part of the EU (UK, Germany, Spain etc). |
| 21st May 2017, 9:25 PM | #14 REPORT | |
| Lee Wrecker If you can't dig me, you can't dig nothin' Member since Nov 2013 2283 Points | PhilMH and TopPopper in my second suggestion these are taken care of as is your previously mentioned Korean produced Australian release PhilMH, It also takes care of the EU and Australasian "boilermaker" by focusing on country/region of release, the intended market and is incidentally in line with the rest of the site (45Cat and LPs). " 1. Made In Country/Region + Marketed in Country/Region = Listed as from that Country/Region 2. Made In Country/Region + Marketed in a different Country/Region = Listed as from a different Country/Region (ie. EU made UK releases) listed as UK release or Australian in your case Phil 3. Made In Country/Region + Marketed in multiple Countries/Regions = Listed as from Country/Region" I know these suggestions look like simple off the top of the head solutions but believe me I've thought long and hard about this and think we could logically fit almost any CD into one of the three options(there will always be some anomalies). My intention is not that we choose one but use the three suggestions here concurrently as guidelines. I may not have communicated that as well as I could have but that was my intention. Site users and MODS alike balk at the thought of using the "international" category as it currently stands. See TopPopper's and Magic Marmalade's comments above and then witness the the endless trainspotting for different details including sec. cat#s, different publishers, longbox cat#s etc. that users will use to avoid classifying a CD as international. So my conclusion here is that MODS and site users are not at all happy with the way it currently works and attempt to avoid it at all costs. Essentially what I'm proposing is a "what's on the tin" method of entry with a few guidelines for cases such as but not exclusively the EU made CD with a different specific country of release or the USA made CD that is also available in other countries. Another point of note is that after having entered about 700 CDs and commented on hundreds of others on this site I believe there more differences than similarities in global CD production than you might imagine when you get down to the finer details. This why I've completely ignored them in my suggestions as a way forward as they (barcodes, cat#s, sec. cat#s) will only confuse the issue further. Just thought I'd explain where I'm coming from in regard to my suggestions and their apparent off handedness and lack of sophistication. I assure you the reverse is true but I still would like people to try and shoot holes through them. The aim of this exercise is to improve things after all. Edited by Lee Wrecker on 21st May 2017, 10:25 PM |
| 22nd May 2017, 6:31 AM | #15 REPORT | |
| Apollo59 the future ain't what it used to be Member since Feb 2013 459 Points | Hi Lee Wrecker and ev'ry body. All the possible combinations as suggested make sense to me and I think I've caught grasp of it. Two heads are better than one, as they say (unless it's your wife!). Speaking from personal experience, I used to buy CD's in several regions of the world because my job was outwith Europe. So, basically I know that it would be highly unlikely for me to readily find a Roy Harper CD in Turkmenistan. However, I'd like to offer some info from an entirely different angle which may or not be of interest to some. Here's an example for perusal, that being south east Asia, such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. I bought maybe a 1,000 CD's during my time there throughout the 1990's. Suffice to say all of them were western artists. Occasionally some would be made in Australia, so fairly straightforward in that respect. However, the vast majority were either UK or EU. There was nothing on these discs regards to distribution in any other territory other than what they were intended for. This suggests (as I've said to Lee previously) that any entrepreneur can go buy, export and sell and has nothing to do with any record company's global marketing strategy or such. The only time I did see evidence of some kind of distribution management was in UAE, where they stick a sticker on top of the front paper sleeve (under the casing) with "For Sale in Gulf Region Only". Yet every other facet of detail on these discs is as if you bought it in HMV on Oxford Street. What I did find out with regards those that I bought in Jakarta, probably 75% of the 1,000, is that they weren't in fact marketed there at all. They were only in shops (a handful at most) because the people owning these shops, just 2 companies involved, went and got them from European distributors and arranged their export off their own backs. Included were also large selections of Italian bootlegs which they termed 'imports' to differentiate the 20% marginal price difference between the boots and something on say, Polydor label. I'm talking of stock levels of thousands of CD's, just as you'd see in HMV on Oxford Street. I found the same thing going on in Nairobi, Kenya and St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Not that these places are of the slightest concern, but indicative of practices to be found around the world. Following on. Later, I was in Sydney, Australia, and spoke to the owner of this pretty good going independently owned shop. I asked him how easy it was to get stuff over that wasn't directly released in Oz. His answer was along the lines of easy if it's mainstream, but a lot of a my punters aren't wanting that stuff. So I called a friend - trader, back in UK to fax me his lists. The short and sweet is he had loads of good Indy stuff. The owner made up his order, down payment made. stuff shipped. Again, nothing to do with any record company marketing strategy. That was the beginnings of my other "weekend job", that of importer/trader. Another thing that goes on which isn't strictly legit. As you can imagine, Sony Universal produce millions of CD's. There's two details in particular that continuously cause production problems. 1) Printed material. All too often upon initial releases of CD's, they find printing errors with regards the small print stuff for publishing rights and so forth. You'd think by now they'd have a better standard of proof reading, but apparently not. Typical large company modus operandi - gleaming on the outside, a crock of shit within. These discs get batched up and sent off for destruction as it's cheaper to do that than have people removing the incorrect sleeves and inserting the corrected. Only they don't get destroyed. The destruction plant management people are kinda sussed with what to destroy (as proof they're doing what they're contracted to do) and what's worth something on the side.They're sold on from the destruction plant after hours to people in the know for very little. These are the discs that you'll find in certain well known stores at "very reasonable prices". Similarly with above, these discs gets distributed all over the place, to all corners of the globe. 2) The back sleeve of CD's. When the machinery belt is running at full tilt, sometimes sleeves stick to one another or don't fall into the tray correctly. Subsequently they concertina when the next phase follows with the insertion of the tray on top. Each line holds around 100 CD's at any time. They switch off, clear the line into big skips and send them off for destruction. At least in theory. There's some canny people out there who have no difficulties at all reproducing carbon copy back sleeves as replacements. These discs get shipped out to pastures wide. Either the industry is blindly stupid or makes so much they don't care, but I haven't been referring to a couple of hundred here and there. I've been in this so-called destruction plant place myself on several occasions. My trader buddy orders 7 to 8 pallets worth at a time. 7 pallets = 62,000 CD's. At £1.50 each, he trades them on for £3. He has people from all over Europe buying from him at his storage facility, in person and on-line. Bear in mind that my trader buddy is only one of such customers and the scale of this operation is remarkable. I'll keep my dealings with this enterprise stuum. Did somebody mention International? Edited by Apollo59 on 22nd May 2017, 6:40 AM |
| 27th May 2017, 1:44 AM | #16 REPORT | |
| The_Vinyl_Junkie SUBS My body is on the diminishing streak. Member since Dec 2011 8103 Points Moderator | I have two examples here where the cat # and barcode are identical with the only difference being "Made in Xxxxxx" 553 507-2 - I changed the entry from U.K. to International and added the images of the "Made In Australia" parts. 840 148-2 - I left the U.K. entry as is and made a new entry for Australia. Once again only minor differences in the artwork along with the "Made In Australia". Ask yourself the question, which way did Admin have in mind for the entries? The Status Quo way or the Cat Stevens way. |
| 27th Jun 2017, 7:31 PM | #17 REPORT | |
 | Jake Smarm Member since Jul 2015 622 Points | The way I see it there is probably no CD in the world that is International in the true sense - that is being issued in every country. What we need is this. I have a UK CD so I enter it as a UK CD by selecting UK from the dropdown list. Someone else has the exact same CD that they bought in (say) France (Same Title, Cat no, tracks etc) so they should be able to click on Additional Info and the Country Dropdown menu should be available for them to select France. This means the CD now has two flags, UK and France. A third person who knows it was also available in Germany could add that country too. Much more accurate. |
| 29th Jun 2017, 1:23 AM | #18 REPORT | |
| The_Vinyl_Junkie SUBS My body is on the diminishing streak. Member since Dec 2011 8103 Points Moderator |
Jake Smarm wrote:
The way I see it there is probably no CD in the world that is International in the true sense - that is being issued in every country.
A guide to Country |
| 29th Jun 2017, 9:31 AM | #19 REPORT | |
| kab2112 SUBS ● Wales, where men are men and sheep are nervous Member since Jan 2011 15478 Points Moderator | I think that the method we currently use is fit for purpose. In certain cases CDs are issued in one particular country. If a CD is sold in say the UK, France, Germany then I would classify it as European. I don't think it has to be available in every European country to qualify as European. If it is also sold in some other continents such as the Americas, Asia, Australasia then I would classify it as International. Again I don't think it has to be available in every country to qualify as International as there are some where they would definitely not be available to buy unless the buyer had it imported. I know there are many grey areas in classifying CDs, but I don't see a solution that's going to satisfy everyone. I know some of you will now want to give me a last cigarette before I face the firing squad. |
| 29th Jun 2017, 10:51 AM | #20 REPORT | |
| Magic Marmalade If you're not lost... It's not an adventure! Member since Jun 2014 3774 Points Moderator | I think the problem boils down to the fact that we are trying to apply logic to the illogical... Where, in the pre-CD age, release patterns followed very logical and set methods, according to defined producers and markets, which were evident in the releases, and which the releases were themselves evidence of, the expansion of markets proceeding from political arrangements (European Union expansion and integration, and other International agreements, and trade deals) has muddied the waters somewhat. And different arrangements and practices of the above are evident between labels and label groups at the same time, and even this has been a very fluid situation, and so some logic that applied to one particular label one year may not be true the next... (If Sony / Universal gobbled it up, and by virtue of this, conferred access to it's greater markets than the label itself previously sold to.) ...so you may find the "same" CD with same cat and even bar-code, but with an additional code or new marking on it... or maybe not at all. I have some CDs (Ray Lamontagne: Trouble, Robert Plant: Mighty Rearranger, and Ocean Colour Scene: Mosley Shoals), where it is evident that the situation was that the album (CD) was locally produced in the first instance (UK), in order to be financially efficient, but when these CDs sold well, they were effectively "kicked upstairs" to a Central European manufacturer, who could handle the higher capacity, and sell it to a broader market. The other exceptions being, that Australia once made a much higher percentage of it's own CDs for it's own market, more recently, probably for "cost cutting" reasons, more of the European issues were simply sold there... (Likely to boost ((mask)) falling sales within Europe, so they can say that they are selling just as much of the European issues as ever - even though they have simply expanded the market for that issue) ...And Italy, which apparently kept a pretty tight control of it's release market, and resisting joining the broader European show (until recently) ((I think later SIAE stamped Italian issues may be required at some stage to be re-integrated with European releases)) So what you have folks, is globalisation of capitalism expressed in CD form = A mess. (no wonder the global ecomnomy is in the sh*%£er ) There are a couple of existing site features which could be very telling, if integrated: CDs by year (graph) CDs by country. If you could look at the "by year" graph, and further break it down into a graph "by country (Europe + International too), and then overlay these graphs somehow, in order to see the progression from one state of affairs to the other, I'd wager you'd see a movement from the consistent, set patterns of logic we know from vinyle dayes, through the nineties as an increasingly messy, complicated fudge, with no single market logic prevailing. (It won't just move from UK, to Europe, to International). Omni-shambles anyone? |
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Vinyl Albums : Live Music : 78 RPM : CD Albums : CD Singles : 12" Singles : 7" Singles : Tape Media : Classical Music : Music Memorabilia : Cinema : TV Series : DVD & Blu-ray : Magazines : Books : Video Games : Create Your Own World
Latest » Items : Comments : Price Guide : Reviews : Ratings : Images : Lists : Videos : Tags : Collected : Wanted : Top 50 : Random
45cat for 7" singles : 45worlds for music, movies, books etc : 45spaces for hundreds more worlds