Discogs
How to submit your release to discogs
Anybody who collects, buys, makes or sells noise or music is familiar with the website discogs.com. There is however a lot of frustration about submitting information about releases to the site. It is often criticized as being nitpicky over details that do not seem to matter. For example even though many of the guidelines lean towards accuracy based on how detail is represented on the packaging of a release there is a strict capitalization policy for making entries into their database. This is probably the top comment I hear people mention about making submissions there.
Other complaints have been over track timings, limited editions, digital versus photos of packaging and artist name variations.
Also despite the management of discogs stating that the guidelines are not rules they tend to be treated as such. Also in many cases the wording in the guidelines is not easy to understand. For example in regards to image of the an exact release the word exact means that you must take a photo or scan of the copy you own to represent that version of the release. Uploading the digital art you printed for the release does not pass muster. One reason is because the printing process can often contain errors that are used to differentiate different versions or runs of a given release. This is more important if you are trying to tell apart the dozen of different versions of a Beatles release but for the typical noise label this is rarely going to be the case not to mention that most like taking a photo of a release with your phone can greatly alter the appearance of the art.
The same applies for timings. For example if you put out a recording on vinyl and you do not include the track timings on the packaging then it will not suffice to use the timings from the digital files. You have to manual time the tracks times by playing back the record. What I find odd about this is that the guidelines say you only need to list the actual times if they are more or less than 5 secs from the actual timings. https://reference.discogslabs.com/wiki/Undocumented-Guidelines
"Durations printed on CD releases should not be corrected in the tracklist and explained in the notes (as permitted by RSG § 12.6.5) unless the difference is at least 5 seconds."
It is important whenever you submit info that is not on the packaging to state where it came from and you want it to be from the CD or vinyl or directly from the printed artwork. Unless the release is a digital file it is almost never acceptable to say you got the data from the files you used to press or print the release.
Another are of contention is tags. For example many noise releases consist of a small number of copies. This in itself does not constitute a "Limited Edition". However if the packaging says "Limited Edition" or the record labels website calls it a "Limited Edition" then it is a limited edition. If the copies of the release are numbered then it can also be tagged as Numbered.
Another tag you want to avoid is Stereo. It is assumed that most releases are Stereo unless there is a version where it is not. There was a time when releases where often issued in Stereo and Mono versions. However you might put out a lathecut that is Mono and tag it as such otherwise it is assumed to be Stereo.
