[iamneorev]

Originally Posted by TheBang

I think there are two things that are preventing you from understanding how Discogs wants to operate.

The first is the sorting of the releases into different categories (albums, compilations, singles/EPs, Misc, etc.). As purlieu said, there's some old code and criteria that are not the greatest that makes for some messy sorting sometimes. You're just going to have to accept that you cannot affect that. There have been tons of discussions about it, and nothing's going to be changed with it in the near term. However, you cannot (and should not) tag formats based on how you want to force the releases to category sort.

Which brings me to the second item. The format tagging. In your posts, you've cited a lot of things that don't matter to Discogs, like number of tracks, duration, music retailer categorization, etc. You have to ignore all the stuff that you yourself normally consider or think of when you try to tag releases as singles, EPs, or albums on Discogs. In fact, the guidelines even say this: "Do not guess at or attempt to apply personal standards to these tags." In the guideline, the only thing that matters is, did the band/label/release refer to/designate it as a single or EP or album? If so, then you can use the tag. If not, then you can't. It's really that simple.

As for your poing about compilations, there are special rules about the Compilation tag, and it can absolutely be used in conjunction with other tags (it even says so first thing in the guideline: "The compilation tag can be used in conjunction with any other available tag, for example, 'Compilation, Album'"). So, for Drift Songs, it could, conceivable, qualify for both the Album and Compilation tags. However, we don't actually know yet, since we don't know what's going to be on the album. If it's all new songs, or different versions of the songs, it might not qualify for the Compilation tag.

The number of tracks and duration is what another Discogs member brought forth to try to distinguish albums and EPs. He posted a link about what the different sites consider the standard for each format. Not me. My point was in response to that and I clearly said how the lines are being blurred in my posts above and how the number of tracks and albums doesn't matter anymore. Hence Nine Inch Nails calling what should technically be an EP an album by these standards that others pointed out and how these Drift Episodes would be considered albums instead of EPs if went by them. One of the first articles about Drift called these Episodes EPs, 5 EPs and an album, which is why I said the listings should be under the EP section, not the album or miscellaneous section. I am not putting a personal standard on them. I am calling them EPs because they were called that in an article where the band was specifically interviewed about the Drift series. They didn't pull the info out of a hat. They distinguished the EPs from the album that would come later.