[ ] Changing title for digital release.

Bumping this thread, linked to by bgz in submission notes.

Does a digital release need to be downloadable to be eligible? I think it should, but have we moved beyond that at this point?

If someone puts out a release on, say, Spotify, why would it matter if it's downloadable? I think we're wayyyy past that point in how music is consumed.

What about a YouTube single? It’s downloadable if you have a premium account (same goes for Spotify).

I kinda think they should be downloadable too, but it's extremely rare that a (distributed) streaming release isn't downloadable somewhere, somehow. Aside from Apple Music, Spotify and others offering offline play to premium users, bands will typically use a distributor that also happens to distribute to sites selling downloads, eg. 7Digital, Qobuz, Melon (Google Play too for music released before Oct 2020). And iTunes is still a separate thing from Apple Music, offering DRM-free downloads of AAC files. The example of GayC/DC - Hold Your Head Up is on Apple Music so it may be on iTunes too, and I just found it's downloadable on Ototoy.

What I think should be ineligible is direct uploads, eg. to YouTube or non-downloadable Soundcloud tracks. Maybe that's what Ruiter means by YouTube single. How can you reliably distinguish between a band's direct upload of a song, and a clip of them just fooling around? In the grey area somewhere in between are numerous rehearsal clips and live performances of songs that were never intended to be a "single". As I understand it, premium YouTube users can save all videos for offline play, so that's not a good measure.

So for a streaming release to count, I think it really needs to be distributed through the proper channels via one of the distributors (Amuse, CDBaby, DistroKid, Ditto Music, RouteNote, TuneCore and numerous others). If it looks and sounds like a single but the band haven't done that, then telling them to put it on Bandcamp might work! If for some arcane reason they've used a distributor but deliberately made it exclusive to one particular streaming site with no download functionality, perhaps we can allow that anyway because it's such a rare case - could also just be us overlooking some site we couldn't find.