A discussion about a perhaps special case happened today[1] triggered
some questions here:
1. Does it make sense to follow the (probably economic driven) decision
of amazon which of their stores is the "main" store for a release
(the one which offers a release without the [IMPORT]-addition) in
*any* case or could this be sometimes inconvenient for a MB-user?
2. Is the location of the label releasing an album more important than
the origin and/or location of the artist if it comes to the
Amazon-Relationship? Especially if script and/or language of release
and amazon shop differ?
There are cases where an (i.e. French) artist is more popular on a
foreign market (i.e. Japan) also he/she produces his/her titles in his
native language/script and these titles are "only" transliterated into
the foreign language/script by the foreign producing company/label and
this transliteration only happens for the cover/package of the release.
In the situation described above it is IMO unconvenient for a user if
he/she visits a release page on MB with content he/she is able to read
but is forwarded to a shop where the track-titles are totally different
from the ones he/she has seen on MB. Wouldn't it be better to link to
one of the amazon-stores which uses the same script (i.e. Latin) the
titles of the release are written in instead of linking to a shop using
a different script (i.e. Kanji) and not depend too much on decisions
based on marketing-issues by amazon?
According to the MB-guidelines[2] "it is *preferred* to enter the
version of the amazon store which sells the original version". What's
the definition for "original version"? The location of the producing
company/label (vs. i.e. location of recording or mixing company if any)?
The requirement to link to the amazon-store which sells the original is
not traceable over the time (and not logical in some cases) - amazon may
change this at any time caused by marketing decisions. A good example
for this is another release[3] - it's up to the reader to find the
current one of the six amazon shops without the [IMPORT]-note ;-) The
original release was published by sonymusic.fr and you would expect that
amazon.fr is the "main" shop (but isn't).
Should the amazon-linking continue the strict way it is required at the
moment or should this issue be handled more liberate in the future?
Cheers
bettercom / Martin
Footnotes:
[1]
http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=10220113[2]
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/AmazonRelationshipType[3]
http://musicbrainz.org/show/release/?releaseid=175481_______________________________________________
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