Does Discogs supersede printed discographies?

Oh, this is DEFINITELY Discogs problem. The main entry space should only be for specific album titles. (Not pressing, etc.). Within a title, pressing plant should be a designated field, and you should be able to customize what fields you see and sort upon.

1) Create field for pressing plant
2) Create tree structure presentation of versions. Parent is based on Title. All sub-entries can be toggled open/shut, and would include Date/Country/PressingPlant/PromoDesignation/etc.
3) Each toggle is by default shut, unless otherwise set in persistent user-specific settings
4) Also have a open_all/close_all toggle. Open_all would basically provide the flat presentation you have now, with all the noise.

This would all need to be fleshed out into a usable GUI/spec, and there are plenty of bugaboos, but the point is that it's a Discogs issue and it's getting worse--and a good UE team could go a long way to fixing this.

Another problem with Discogs: All photos are downsized to a very small size. Clicking on the image to make the image bigger doesn't work.

 

For 45s, I tend to use 45cat as an online resource. For each artist, it has separate listings for each country, and the different pressing plants are under the same basic listing. Also, you have the option of seeing all of Prince's 45s under the same listing regardless of label credit.

I've added some listings, some illustrations, and some variations to 45cat, and if my scanner and computer are ever in the same place as my 45 rpm collection, I'll add more.

 

Even though it’s not perfect, Discogs is a valuable source to anybody interested in music. I use it all the time to check for certain pressings on vinyl or CD that I’m interested in; it allows me to pinpoint the catalog numbers and any other identifiers. Very useful tool for tracking down items in the same series… sorry, but books can’t compete on this level…

 

Like others have already said Discogs is a source of information contributed by the users like me and maybe you. I do see mistakes and omissions from time to time. If I can correct them I will. If I cannot I simply make comments with the discrepancy in the. notes field. I download a file of my collection one a month just in case Discogs should ever fade to black.

 

I typically use discogs, rym and Wikipedia as my three main sources of discography info. VERY often, there are disagreements between all three of them regarding release dates (even disagreements over the year often enough), labels, catalog numbers, exact titles of albums and songs (at least discogs usually has photos for this aspect), and so on. I frequently find myself looking for other sources to try to figure out just what the right info is.

 

While we're at it, what about their genres, which are often plain wrong, are often assigned against Discogs own guidance with for example numerous recordings classified as Smooth Jazz even though released long before any such thing as Smooth Jazz existed, I haven't looked recently, but non western music used to be treated appallingly wrongly classified as Folk or some such. I think they really need to pay some people who know music to go through their genres and sort them out, leaving it to users hasn't worked.

 

THIS
I got fed up of fighting back every single time I added an entry of any album I uploaded, even with the media artifact in hand, they do not accept that another version, reissue or new pressing, can exists....I used to colaborate a lot, had a scanner 24/7 to scan images of many many items I own that they don't have, but right now Discogs it has become a bunch of wise guys' fav toy...it was insteresting I admit, but not anynore... members of the Discogs faculty took away the fun.

 

I thought it was just me. Good to find out that's not the case.

 

Intentionally trolling wikis to add misinformation is, unfortunately, actually a thing.

I once had a very anti-wiki colleague who spent every spare moment seeing if he could sneak errors into Wikipedia. Changing dates, subtly altering quotes, etc. I guess his initial aim was to prove the superiority of written sources. He kept a database of the whole endeavour and was surprisingly successful. Counterintuitively, some of his errors actually entered written sources after the authors sourced information from Wikipedia. When this happened, he'd entirely miss the irony, and happily go and add the written source as a reference to the Wikipedia article.

So, I don't trust wikis in general, including Discogs. Nor do I really trust any particular source that just happens to have been published in print - it depends on what effort went into preparing it. Well researched books, generally on an individual artist, will go back to primary sources.

However, printed discographies do have value in that they're stable over time. An error that is introduced into a wiki, either purposefully or inadvertently, may be perpetuated into digital sources over and over again. However, a historical printed reference isn't affected, and where it differs, further investigation is warranted.

 

The main disadvantage is that the constant updates are not perhaps well-filtered.

 

Define "very small."

I regularly see images CD size.

 

Ironically, he succeeded in proving the inferiority of his ethics.

 

Yes, all of this. The Discogs database treats the difference between two LPs pressed from the same master at different plants the same as the difference between an original first pressing LP and a bootleg Mongolian 8-track.

 

And all Calypso records are classified as "Reggae." And "Classic Rock" is a genre instead of a radio format...

 

I get a little bugged that certain pressings or artist's albums are not in the correct order. For example, so and so group put out two albums in 1966. It goes alphabetically. It'd be great if actual dates the album came out could be rendered in and adjust where it fits. Usually one quick Google search, one can find the actual date of release. The other example is: Eagles s/t, same year but one pressing had a gatefold, the other did not. Which one came first? You wouldn't know just by looking at the list. Granted, most written discographies don't include that information anyways.

 

I wish the photos on Discogs were better quality. I can rarely read the liner notes or even the tracklist sometimes.

Another issue I have is that if an artist releases more than 1 album in a year, it is about a 50% chance that they are listed in the correct release order. Not a huge deal I guess, because I mainly use Discogs to purchase music, but I would definitely prefer that everything is in the correct order.

 

Personally, I find dicsogs useful as a "first glance" source, but for any any real deep dive, one needs to look elsewhere. Their indexing for pre-LP artists is beyond absurd. For albums from the "singles era," what purports to be a compilation & what doesn't is completely random. Case in point: Hank Williams.

 

Isn't that due to copyright law? Like they can use an image of an album cover, but it has to be at a relatively low resolution.

 

This was one of the downfalls of the company I worked for that aggregated and normalized music data. Our customers wanted to use cheaper user generated content. Well, you get what you pay for.

 

At times I've noticed some omissions in their data.

For a while Discogs was the "go to" but now they're just another "one of" sources.

 

Discord is as reliable as the information that’s put into it.

 

WikiPedia does that, but Discogs carries some pretty large images.

 

Every Hank Williams "album" ever released is a comp . . . IMHO.

 

Discogs is a phenomenal database of information, very useful to see what prices different products sell for and also to identify any higher value items that you might be unaware of. For example, I have an extensive classical CD collection, most bought at 20 pence to one pound sterling in charity shops. A large number of these are and do sell for £10 to £30.

 

My main irritation is that released are not chronological past the year. So going alphabetically in 1964, Beatles For Sale would appear to have released before A Hard Day's Night, for example. It's even more confusing for singles, when artists released 4 or more (internationally) within a year.