Album type differentiators

We already note compilations, splits, and soundtracks by use of a word after the album title. I think those should be taken out of the titles and inserted in some sort of "album type" designator for each album. This way we could also differentiate between singles, full albums, DVDs, live albums, compilations (of one band's material instead of many) etc. I'd suggest the "type" be selected from a list of choices (instead of being freeform), and that the contents be displayed after the album title on an album page. I'm not sure about displaying it anywhere else, like on the band summary page -- probably too much clutter there.

This would make it clear, for artists where we have tons of releases like Kiss, what albums are "full studio albums" and what are something else. The actual list of choices we want to use is open for debate as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps simple, broad categories are more useful than having a different "type" for everything in the world. Rockdetector has started segregating an artist's releases like this.

... and by default they're "album".

We could distinguish between greatest hits compilation, live double ...

We could even distinguish between single and double albums, but then something like e.g. Live/Dead that originally cropped up on 2 lp's then got released as a single CD - or worse, Soft Machine 4 and 5 that got released on a single CD - would be difficult to distinguish unless we also made a distinction between original LP release and later CD re-packaging (which might be worth considering).

We're not gonna do the re-release stuff are we? A Real Live One and A Real Dead One are two albums, simple as that (or were you not talking about Iron Maiden?). I've got several albums that were originally released on vinyl and bundled per two on a single CD. That's two albums on one disc, but it's still two albums.

Without doubt there are lots of hard cases out there. I was trying to suggest with my second-to-last sentence that tackling the tricky stuff is probably harder + less useful than just trying to make very simple differentiations. I was thinking like:
Studio Album [LP, EP, whatever]
Live Album
Single [CDS, Maxi-Single, etc.]
Multi-Band Compilation [samplers, current "comp." releases]
Single-Band Compilation ["Greatest Hits"-type albums]

I would probably not go much further than that.

Edit: I mentioned splits and soundtracks above, which we currently track. I don't know whether I'd just call all of these "Multi-Band Compilation", or if I'd have a Split choise and/or Soundtrack choice, or what.

Probably "Demo" would be another good type.

Remember, though, keep it as simple as possible, or it's just that much harder to fill in the right type when adding new albums.

This suggestion definitely has merit and could lead to some interesting uses. I'll look into incorporating it when I get a chance.


Kevin

Here are the two basic categories that I think albums could be broken into:

Studio recording
Live recording
--------------
Normal release
Split release
Multi-band compilation
Single band compilation (best of, rarities, B Sides, etc)
Demo

Any studio recording can be a split, demo, comp as can live recordings so I think there has to be two distinct categories for each.

Differentiating between full lengths, EP's, double LP's, etc will ultimately be futile I believe. A double LP can be a single CD (as has been mention) and EP's can be 7"s, 10", 12"s etc. Is a 12" with 4 songs an EP while a 7" with 100 songs not (it does exists, with locking grooves to boot, that thing is a bastard).

Any suggestions as to additional categories or somthing missing?


Kevin

The only things I'm still worried about are albums that are half live and half studio (Roxette's "Tourism" comes to mind and I'm sure there are many others), and whether it makes sense to have "split" and "multi-band" as separate categories. So I'm wondering if:
(a) we should have Studio, Live, and Studio/Live designators? But then perhaps people will get confused and treat "live with overdubs/remix work" as Studio/Live, which wasn't my intent?
(b) we should combine "Split" and "Multi-band" into one? But perhaps it is clear and useful to distinguish the two cases. Although I've seen a 3-band split, and perhaps there are even-more-band splits... those get perilously close to multi-band compilations. Not sure.

My friend suggests that perhaps "Reissue/Remix" is an appropriate category; there is at least one album in the DB that's a later release (with additional track/lineup) of an earlier release, and there's also at least one "alternate mix" album in there, with more in the future from me. But perhaps "remix" albums are best considered "normal" or "single-band comp." releases, depending on the source of the tracks in question?

It's difficult to keep things "as simple as possible, but no simpler."

Incidentally I fervently agree that distinguishing between single/double, vinyl/CD, EP/LP, 7"/12", etc. is generally impossible to do well and stay sane, and it's pretty much useless. So let's definitely avoid that.

Incidentally, I'd like to actually make use of this data by displaying it on albums in some way, and especially by allowing the user to filter out some releases. One example of a system for this is Rockdetector's, which breaks a discogrpahy into a couple of groups. I was thinking more along the lines of a set of checkboxes which would dynamically add or remove albums from a list, as appropriate.

I'll see what I can do with the new data once it is all in place.


Kevin