[x] Scott / everyone : promos

Scott - in another thread you say :
"We allow promo only releases in the dB. This is where much of the stuff played on the radio comes from. Both the promos and the T4 songs exist in a "hard copy" form somewhere and can't be purchased by the general public. With these, you are limited to listening to them on you computer. I say we either leave this in or we kill the promos as well."

We explicitly do NOT allow anything in unless it was released. The 'ability to be purchased by the 'general' public' is an acid test. A 'promo only' (eg sent to radio stations) absolutely fails this test and if you know of any - I'm sure M&K would like you to flag them up so that they can be reviewed and if necessary removed.

When i first started contributing to this site, i specifically asked this question to Mark, and he stated that promos were included because the were released to a "subsection" of the public. Here is one of them -
[bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=9858

I'm more ok with deleting T4 if we didn't allow promos.

I'm not so sure it's that cut and dried. For one thing, the general public can purchase promos in tons of places, from used record stores to eBay. Secondly, there are many releases of limited availablility, such as something a band sold only while on tour, that aren't available to be purchased by the "general public" but still might be considered legitimate releases.

I don't have a really strong opinion one way or another on this subject, but I do think it needs to be codified, so we're all following the same rules.

If I'm wrong Scott - then sorry. But I am sure this has been discussed and unless it was 'buy-able' (even if 'buy-able' for free (if that makes sense...) it was supposed to be excluded. We had a pre-Sparks album failed on this I'm sure of it and long discussions about an Exodus demo.....

Kevin and I envisioned "publicly released" to include regular releases, band-made cassettes and CDs made available to fans (through mail order, web sites, tours, and the like), and even radio-only promotional material.

We envisioned "publicly released" to exclude acetates, vinyl test pressings, and tapes of recording sessions that were shared only with producers or bandmates--the idea being that these items are not available to the public or a subset of the public.

Radio-only promotional items make the cut (in our minds) because they [usually] are distributed outside the band's immediate working "family" of members, producers, and engineers to radio stations, which we consider to be a subset of the public. This particular subset is outside the immediate control of the band. Sure, there's no physical item for the normal fan to take home, but the radio stations themselves are the subset that do get copies.

Obviously the lines can be drawn in several places depending on how you define things like "subset" and "control," but that's how we defined it.

None of this addresses the distinction between downloadable and streaming internet releases though. I have to think a bit more about that.

I don't believe that's what was discussed before to be honest. I agree that all the categories you list make sense as releases - apart from 'radio-only promtional material' where I think there is a clear intention not to 'release'.
The Exodus tape that was discussed was believed to be a demo that was made for the purposes of getting a record deal. That 'left the band's immediate family', it 'was available to a subset of the public' and yet the distinction, I believed, was clearly drawn that (setting aside the fact that the Exodus demo may actually have been sold by mail order) such a limited and controlled distribution did not count as a 'release'.
So is the rule now that if something goes to anyone outside those categories of the band plus their immediate and controllable affiliates - it's been released? This will open up all sorts of interesting releases - particularly demo tapes submitted by bands.

I agree that we've never summarized "public release" the way that I just presented it, but Kevin and I have always taken this approach, at least in our discussions with each other, and there are quite a few radio-only promo singles in the database for that reason.

As far as the Exodus demo and other demos submitted to record labels are concerned, I thought I was including those in my second paragraph when I said "recording sessions that were shared only with producers or bandmates." I don't think that the submission of demos to record labels constitutes a public release for the reason you said ("such a limited and controlled distribution...").

If you check the wiki notes to Exodus : "Bonded By Blood," you'll see everything I could dig up on the Exodus demo. A lot of generic metal sites refer to it as a release, but my conclusion was that the band made copies of the recordings for some friends and those people made copies for other people, and so on. That limited sharing just doesn't cut it as a public release (for me).

On the other hand, my research on [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=10140 led me to believe that the band publicly released copies of its so-called "demo" to fans.

All that said, I agree that a radio-only promo single differs greatly from a "normal" single release. I would not intuitively count this, for example, as a public release:
[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=15139

OK. I was wrong.

I'm not used to this sort of MP response. I still think its worth discussing further, especially if others want to jump in.

Sorry - I'll get snarly and rambunctious if you want :-)
I'm conceding because (even if it's not where I would have drawn the line) I think the line can be made consistently as you've done it. A radio-only promo was meant for playing to 'the public' even if 'the public' couldn't actually get their hands on it. A demo sent to Atlantic Records was meant for that defined audience - the public couldn't hear it - let alone buy it. That said - I think this opens us up to the transient nature of some of these things. What about a radio session? Meant for the public but they couldn't buy it (and lack of a physical entity is not a barrier to entry into our dB). I would have moved the cut-off just slightly and defined the public as the general public plus band-defined audiences that are not only subsets of the music industry, eg A&R men, radio stations = no, fan clubs, giving stuff anway on the street or on magazines = yes.
But like I say - I now understand the line that was drawn - let's see what problems, if any, that gives us.

So, to summarize, radio promos are in, demos are out unless released outside of record company personnel?

(And you're still coming with a rule for music that only streams but doesn't download?)

That's right. And now I'd like to tackle the streaming vs. downloadable problem.

I think I can safely say that downloadable songs are the functional digital equivalent of traditional tangible single releases.

Is stream-only music the same as a radio promo for which the station has a physical copy and the public does not? Maybe. Certainly if myspace can provide streams to the public, it must have a static downloadable version of the same music on its server.

Or is it more like a radio session (MP's example) in which a band performs publicly on the air, such that the public can hear the music but can't get a physical version?

Thoughts?

Just to muddy the waters, consider Frank Zappa's Lather: never released at the time it was created (1976-ish), but played in full (all 8 sides of vinyl) on the radio at which time the listeners were encouraged (by Zappa himself) to bootleg it. Only actually released 20 years or so later, after his death. Does that 1976 radio-play count as a release?