[mb-users] Adding releases not yet released

[Philipp Wolfer]

2007/9/5, Aaron Cooper <cooperaa at gmail.com>:
> As Chris has said, we have a Promo release status that can be used and
> there should be no problem adding promotional versions of releases to
> MB.  Leaked versions of albums are much more reliable than just a
> published tracklist because they usually come from promotional CDs and
> therefore are considered a "release" in MB.

I'm a little bit surprised that you are so strongly against adding
releases without released tracks since it was especially you who
convinced me that adding releases before their release date can be OK
[1]. But I now realized that in all those cases where you were in
favor of such an edit there were PUIDs or TRMs attached to the tracks
or there was a promo release you knew about (at least that's valid for
the edits I've seen and voted on myself).

This is surely a good proof for a coming release and, as Chris pointed
out, adding a promotional release is safe. Ok. But I'm still against
making this a condition. Especially if a release is heavily advertised
by the label and the band itself and the release date is not far away
the track listing and the release date seldom change. There is no need
that the editor entering those details must be in the possession of a
promotional release (and I know promotional releases with shortened
tracks which aren't of much use in this case anyway).

If we lower the data quality of such a release and add a comment as
you suggested we should be on the safe side and can later correct the
details. But we benefit from the fact that we have up-to-date data in
MB.

> This is why I say don't add a release based on a published tracklist
> or rumors.  Only add it when there is a recording to go with the
> tracklist.  It is very easy to validate many of these leaked albums
> because they are all over torrent sites and I've seen instances where
> the first few pages of searches on an 'artist name + album title' are
> filled with torrents.  This makes it somewhat simple to verify
> promotional tracklists, but I'm not saying it is the best way to
> verify.  It is always better to confirm with official sources.

I still trust the official sources more than some random playlists in
a P2P network, and I don't consider torrent sites "official sources".
Of course those leaked albums are in a short time all over the
different p2p sites, but that doesn't make them more reliable since
they only get copied from one to another. You can put up a wrong
release and it will get spread in a similar way.

[1] http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=6474608

-- 
Philipp Wolfer