New Recordings!

Since the beginning of the year there has been a lot of discussion about recordings and what exactly they should be used for. After several meetings on IRC and a couple of huge topics on the style mailing list, we're finally ready to bring in a new definition for recordings, and new style guidelines to go with it!

The new recording definition can be viewed at: http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Recording

And the accompanying style guidelines are at: http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Recording

The new guideline brings significant changes to the way recordings should be used, so all editors dealing with recordings should take the time to read it.

As a short summary, recordings are now never produced solely through copying or mastering. This means that recordings shouldn't distinguish between different masters of some audio - in general, a recording will correspond a particular mix or edit. In addition:

- AcoustIDs and ISRCs have been removed from the guideline - they are mostly irrelevant for managing recordings under the new definition.
- Guidelines for audio channels have been introduced.
- Existing guidelines have been expanded.
- Several in-depth examples have been added to explain how recordings should be used.

Also, as a result of these changes, the recording-recording remaster relationship type and the artist-recording master relationship type have been deprecated.

Thanks to everyone who was involved on mb-style and in the IRC meetings for your excellent ideas and contributions!