As some of you may have already noticed, we've introduced a new feature to our website - the "other versions" feature. In short, we now have a way for users to add reissues/rereleases/etc. to already existing albums in a band's discography. With this new feature, we've also updated our album pages and added a slew of new fields and places to include information. This has an effect on the rest of the site, as well. Reviewers can now specify which version of an album they actually reviewed. Individuals can now include specific versions of an album in their collections. And, my personal favorite, label pages can now include all the metal albums they've released... even if those releases are reissues previously released by other labels!

That said, we know there'll be some hiccups as this new feature is introduced, and we get used to using it (and figuring out ways of doing things). This thread exists as a place for you all to ask (the mods) for our input on what you should do, if there's a case that comes up where you're not too sure what to do. Please keep in mind that we did change our rules page a bit, as well as our help page to reflect these changes.

I do want to stress a VERY important point. The master/parent album listed in a band's discography SHOULD BE the ORIGINAL version of that album. Unfortunately after 12 years of existence without this feature, there are going to be a lot of albums listed on the site that are not the original version. BEFORE you add reissues, please make sure the master/parent album that you're basing all the reissues off of is the original version. For our sake, the original version is the album closest to what could be considered the master... the one that started it all. Usually this is the first version released, but that may not always be the case (especially with licensed Japanese versions being released before the original version is slated for release).

Here is an example of a (nearly completed) album: http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Ba ... athory/754

EDIT: If you notice any bugs with the feature, let us know right away. This version changed a lot, and we know it could be broken in some places.

EDIT2: We've been receiving concerns about not being able to add tracks to "Side B". Just like you can do with the tracks, you can drag and drop the "Side B" option into the middle of the tracklist. Just click "Side B" and drag it. You can do the same by clicking the track numbers of songs!

EDIT3: Two important notes. They're mentioned in the rules, but I just want to reiterate it here, too. Firstly, please keep in mind that the versions you add must be complete; unfinished, incomplete, or test versions should not be added. Likewise, they have to have been released. A version only intended as a promo for labels, and never released publicly, shouldn't be added either. This is definitely true for test pressings, too. Secondly, please remember that we don't want separate versions for aesthetic differences (vinyl color, for example). If it's the same version with very minor differences in color or catalogue number, it is not necessary to create separate versions. Please just amalgamate them into one. This is something we differ with Discogs on!

Just to keep others updated, I encourage mods to work on the bands with locked discographies first. For information purposes, I'm going to tackle Bathory to begin with. I suggest other mods take up locked bands, as well.

I have a question in regards to Japanese pressings. Some of these come out earlier than over here, but are still technically licensed pressings. What should be done here?

A prime example would be the latest Persuader album. It was released on Dec 25th, 2013 in Japan, but I think Inner Wound Recordings is their actual label (release date Jan 17th, 2014).

I'm trying to add song lengths to an album and it's says it's loading but not doing anything. The main site has been off an on for last hour. Could be because of the new feature?

I had the same issue as mjollnir and that another one posting the Japan edition of Golden Resurrection's first album:

The posting of the version didn't record King Records as the label, and when I edited it then it featured two versions (one marked as Independent and other marked as King Records). A weird case of double-posting.

I did overkill's feel the fire, for some reason CD versions are still showing Side A/B, like it can't tell that it isn't a vinyl. It doesn't come up under the edit tab but once you save it it is there.

When adding a master copy, should I delete the tracklisting of the rerelease in the additional notes?

As long as you plan on adding the reissue as an additional release. I suspect a lot of additional notes are going to get removed due to that redundancy.

It would be helpful if I could see the various versions of an album when I'm just browsing a band's discography. Perhaps a "Version" column could be added in between the "Type" and "Year" columns? I would also be able to jump directly to version I'm interested in.

And hey, thanks for putting in the work for this feature it'll be very helpful.

It can't automatically jump back to the album page after I added the other version or updated the original version, I mean it kept loading. Although all the data were saved, I had to click the album's title link to go back.
But now it is back to normal.

Few thing I ran across.

so I went to add the tyrants blood vinyl but was unable to change the label or even save as is. As it asked for the check box for Independent but it was no where to be found. point system most likely (>400)

When I went to modify a release to add track times I got "Please select a format from the list." with out the list being there.

I simply updated add notes on an album (a video) and it wouldn't let me save until I selected a format option for it. In this case it was easy, as it's only available on CD, but if this happens everytime anyone wants to update anything, it could lead to some inconvenience, and possibly mistakes...

also, since the brief downtime and implementing the new update, whenever I click on "members", I get the "complete line-up", instead of the "current". not that important, but thought I'd mention it.

What aloof said, I came here to say something about the forced format option. I think it would be a good idea to not require that because there might be some releases that never had a format listed and this info is lost/hard to come by on the internet or the person is lazy and just guesses.

I'm getting that problem currently.

Found another bug. I added a CD version of a digital release which may have different track durations than the Bandcamp version as well as one track having a slightly altered name, and when I tried to remove the lengths on a second edit (forgot the initial time) only the duration for track 4 (the one with a different name than on the "master" version) was changed; the others kept the lengths although the edit page shows that I removed them. Dunno, try clearing the cache on that one before anything.

I know that even on the old version pages sometimes wouldn't properly display the correct last edit after lengths/lyrics were added until the cache was cleared or the page was updated again so maybe it's a related problem.

also, what to do wherever two albums have been repackaged as one?

So aside from first day jitters and the like, two things I've noticed:

- When creating a new version of an album from CD to a format with sides, like Vinyl, there seems to be no way of assigning preexisting songs to a new side (and in fact, there doesn't appear to be any way whatsoever to add songs to a new side).
- I don't think it was part of the update, but there's still no option for adding multiple labels to a release, such as you find with splits

When I went to search for albums released in 2014 in Russia, only one result came up - prior to your update I had over 80 bands down?

I use this search feature to see what bands have released this year so that I can ask them whether they want reviews or not, since this feature seems to be affected I am now stuck.

And a question, for the sake of uniformity: for Bandcamp releases, would you rather the "version description" actually read something akin to "Bandcamp release" or just keep them in the add. notes? I would think it would be handy for the description, but that's just me, and I'd like to know before I add a number of them only to have to remove them later on ...

To everyone who had issues with the form being "stuck" while loading, I think this is mostly due to some server issues we've had today, which might be coincidental. Hopefully things will run smoother tomorrow.



Hmm... yeah, not quite sure what to do in this case. We'll need to establish some policies for these cases we may not have thought of yet. What do you think, mods?



Fixed.



Well, this would really clutter discographies. In some cases, there can be 15 or more versions for a single album, but would make for really long and confusing listings, and few people would care to see all versions at once.



Hmm, can you give more details on what you did precisely? You were trying to add a new version, or edit the format of the current one? I can't seem to reproduce a case where you would need to select a label and not have the necessary fields, even as a non-veteran user.



That should be fixed.



Alright, fair point. I changed it so that the format is required for new releases/versions, but not when updating existing ones.



That should be fixed.



That should also be fixed?



If it's like a full-length with an EP or demo, just add the EP/demo as bonus tracks. If it's two full-lengths together, well, at the moment we don't really have an option other than adding it as a separate version entry on each album. :\



Um, you can drag and drop tracks by clicking on their track number... since the beginning of V2. You can now also drag the "side B" row and just place it where it needs to be.



Indeed, that wasn't part of this update.

Hmm, it looks like the search engine had lost some indexing data for some reason. Strange, I'm not sure how that happened. In any case, I reindexed the whole thing so it should work as usual now.



Well... implying we would have separate "Bandcamp release", "iTunes release", "CD Baby release" versions? That seems a bit overkill.

My feeling, and other mods may feel different, but the parent album ought to be the closest album we have to the master that started it all, regardless as to whether it was the first one released. My wording in the original OP should be corrected if others agree with that, but this might mean that the Japanese version you note may not actually be the closest to the original master of the album.

@ Obscurum, that's something we may have to chat about among mods. The problem we might have to face is "what makes a separate digital release?"

Yeah Overkill's ReliXIV was released in Japan first too, but I didn't make that the parent variant.

A very handy feature you might want to consider integrating is to make it possible to form a new version draft based on any release under that type, similar to Discogs' current system. If there are multiple versions of a single reissue, with a rearranged tracklisting from the original, and the only variation being vinyl color or something like that, it'd be much handier to be able to base the edition off of one of the reissues themselves than to keep going back to the parent version and manually editing the year, album art, etc. This is already possible, never mind.

EDIT: I added two new versions to Lykathea Aflame's page and now they're showing up as their own albums on the main band page: http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Lyk ... iscography

Also, I accidentally titled one as "Elvenefris (Remastered Edition)", then changed it to "Elvenefris (Remastered Version)", but the change isn't showing up on the main band page.

EDIT 2: http://www.metal-archives.com/labels/A_ ... abs_albums Scroll down, the label's logo image overlaps the search tools.

No, no, I didn't mean integrating that into the software or anything, just where to specify the original source of a digital release (in the notes or in the "version description" field). Many users, including myself, had already been doing so in album notes for who knows how long, and I feel it's important to list the source(s) of each individual digital version in some manner. Now that the "version description" field exists, should that be the way to go or ...?


On the subject: just my two cents, but I feel that so long as the product is a finished release (even a "finished" demo) with a concrete tracklisting and doesn't vary otherwise (much, if at all), even a MediaFire link should constitute a separate release. With Bandcamp-style multiple-format options, well, tricky-tricky. I could see how grouping them all into one would be concise, but handling it similar to Discogs would be overall more "complete".

The song lengths thing is fixed too, HB.

I'm much too nitpicky.

Excellent! Back to normal

They show up because any release with a different title from the original gets included as its own separate listing in the discography. That said, unless the title includes (Remastered Version) don't change the albums title. Just note that the version is a remaster in the "version description" field. Use the title field when the album's title varies from the original version.

I'll update the OP with a FAQ tomorrow morning.

I changed the title because all pressings of the remastered version say "(Remastered Version)" on the album's spine. The album art itself is still the same. I don't know whether or not it should be included, with that in mind.

EDIT: Adding the character ' " ' to the version description field erases everything after it. Kind of problematic when trying to clarify that a vinyl release is a 7"...

Seriously? Why does no one tell me these things? Nevermind then.

Should the additional notes only contain information specific to the re-release?

Why is there no field for the amount of tracks? I always had the feeling this would be one core aspect in separating the various versions from each other.

Ok so this is probably mostly just user error here but I just put in the limited edition of Antestor's The Forsaken and Det tapte liv. When I tried to put the different art (not really art but it came in a nifty cardboard box see here: http://www.discogs.com/Antestor-Det-Tap ... ase/885044) the image didn't display any differently. So am I just being daft or what?

Edit: also and sorry this was my first time dealing with vinyl, I messed up the side A/B thingy so it all says side A. Side B is from Betrayed on down but I don't have high enough rank to change it on my own. Also sorry if it's kinda choppy and a botched job, I'm still new at actually working on the site so if I fuck it up somehow please let me know

Edit 2: It seems I can't get the side A/B thing to work right on Martyrium either, so I'll just leave those alone, it would be helpful if one of y'all could explain to me what I'm doing wrong though.

On another note how are we to handle something like this: discogs has an entry for this release (http://www.discogs.com/Antestor-Martyri ... se/2779653 ) but MA has it listed as a bootleg in the albums addition notes and the label is not listed on this site either.

http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/At ... oise/16619

First time doing this.

When I tried to divide the 1991 version into sides A and B the B-side tracks just ended up on the A-side. Probably a misunderstanding by me about how to do that, but for anyone who can do it the first four tracks are on the A side.

The person who does that can also write "Digipak" as description for the 2011 version, which I forgot to do. And, if we're suppose to do it, write "Remastered" in the 2004 description.

I tried adding the reissue of Immolation's Unholy Cult with the Bringing Down the World DVD but did not add all of the tracklistings. Now I am unable to go back and add them.

You can just add the additional tracks, if there are any? I don't see why we would need another field for stating the obvious.

CD-r goes under "CD" or "other"?

edit: what I'm trying to say is: shouldn't CD-r be a different format than CD?

A weird thing, not necessarily a huge deal. Let's say you have a split release and you want to add the cover artist under miscellaneous staff. Why do you have to choose a band? Should be a third option for individuals not necessarily associated with either (or 3 or more if there are) band(s) on the split specifically.

Select the category "CD" and make note that it is a CD-R in the version description.

elementary, my dear watson

Not quite, it seems. When I add a CD version for a vinyl or tape parent, it still shows "Side A" on top. I have to edit the release and select "CD" again for that to disappear.


General information pertaining to all versions/the release as a whole can be listed for each child entry. The notes of the parent are automatically copied for child entries, unless you modify them somehow.

two more questions:

I. a band releases a CD, limited to 500 copies, then they do a second pressing of, say 200 copies, exactly the same. one version or two? 500 or 700 as number of copies?

II. how about all the vinyl albums that get released in 100 red, 100 blue, and 300 black vinyl?