Adding album release years, and artists' other albums

Question 1: Since you guys added the ability to display the release year for an album, I figure we should help you out by reporting the release years for the existing albums in the database. What I want to know is what's most convenient for you. Do you want us to mail the normal help@bandtoband.com alias, or post in a particular topic on the forums? And when you get the years, do you want us to give you a verification URL, or just give you the release years and you'll trust us?

Question 2: When adding all the albums by a particular band, what do you think about albums that are either (a) remix CDs (officially released by the band), (b) singles (which generally are EP length and contain both elsewhere-released and otherwise-unreleased content), (c) "official bootlegs" (records officially approved by the members of the band but described with the term "bootleg" -- yes, I've run into one or two of these, I think they were even released on the band's label -- stupid), or (d) random collections of live tracks, previously released material, and new stuff? I have cases of all of them. I can provide a more detailed description if any of these are confusing.

I ask because I'm going back through every band I've ever submitted something about, noting the release years for all of that band's albums in the database, and also writing up all the other albums those bands have released. I hope to start dropping gigantic submissions on you guys soon :D (I assume these types of submissions will be easier and faster to add than linking in whole new unfamiliar artists).

[Edited: Changed "EPs" to "singles" because I assume EPs in general are certainly OK when they're just short albums]

PK,

For now, the best way to do things is by emailing help@bandtoband.com as usual. For the years, at least one supporting URL would be good. I'm such a stickler for accuracy (despite the typos that you always catch) that I usually check two sources for everything.

As far as releases go, I'm all for including anything that has just one lineup on it. Greatest hits packages, releases with both new and old material, and remix albums usually cause trouble because we have to select one lineup to avoid cheating with false shortcuts. So as a general rule, we keep away from those unless we really need the album. Singles are usually great because they have so few songs that there aren't any lineup issues. And they add some variety to the tree. If your remix album has music by just one lineup and you think it's a crucial album to include (I included Kiss's Double Platinum under this theory), then we'll include it. As for item (c), I just don't like the word bootleg. If we can avoid those, let's do it.

I should admit that I have been too strict about live albums in the past. I consistently disallowed them even when they were necessary to include legitimate band members. The general rule is that if there is ANY studio recording of a given lineup, including on a compilation, we'd prefer that over the live release.

OK. None of the things I was going to submit have multiple lineups. I'm not convinced they're "crucial" (so far everything I have duplicates other studio albums with the same lineup), but if they're not unacceptable, I feel like I'm being a total completist in every other way so why not with these as well. So I'll go ahead and submit them.

I did have one other random question. How would you credit an album like, say, Metallica's "S & M" (which could be considred to be "Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony")? Would that just be a normal Metallica album? Would you credit it as a separate band to give the symphony credit? Or what?

I ask because Rage has done a few albums where they actually credit an Orchestra on the album cover, much like this Metallica album does, and I'm not sure how to submit those. (I actually went to your Metallica page to find out, only to discover that you have everything in the world up until the black album, and then your Metallica album list just stops. Wacky.)

I suppose you could think of S & M as a collaboration between Metallica and the Symphony, in which case it would fail under the rules. Or you could categorize it simply as a Metallica release. Without doing some research, my natural leaning is to do the latter, unless it's very clear that it's a collaborative recording and release.

As for what we have in the tree now, that represents my [no longer in existence] Metallica record collection. One great thing about this site is that it gives me a chance to re-collect all the records I used to have.