In the last few weeks I have been digging a lot into CDs and I have come to the conclusion that correctly identifying CDs is difficult: there are so many things that you have to take into account and it is easy to make a mistake. Luckily automation helps!
I decided to look at SPARS codes again, as I felt that story was not yet complete. If you don't know what SPARS codes are, I would suggest to first read my earlier posts about: part 1, part 2 and part 3.
On Wikipedia it says that SPARS code were introduced in 1984. Of course, we all know that if it is on Wikipedia it just has to be true! Wikipedia has a reference to a physical magazine from 1984 and with a bit of searching I found someone who actually describes the same magazine and which seems to confim what Wikipedia says.
So, I wondered: how many releases are there in the Discogs database with a defined SPARS code field (containing a valid SPARS code) and a declared release date prior to 1984?
I was surprised to find 30 releases with a SPARS code and a release date prior to 1984. I had expected fewer. Most of these were CDs where the release date was listed as 1983 and other people had already noticed that some of the artwork and layout were actually indicating a later release date.
What was more surprising is that I also found one vinyl LP (possibly) with a SPARS code that was claiming it was from 1978 actually pre-dating SPARS, the organization that invented the codes!
My guess is that there actually are more releases with this error, as there are still more than 39,000 releases with a SPARS code, but where the SPARS Code field is not used, so I might revisit this topic in the (not so near) future, as soon as significantly more releases use this field.
I decided to look at SPARS codes again, as I felt that story was not yet complete. If you don't know what SPARS codes are, I would suggest to first read my earlier posts about: part 1, part 2 and part 3.
On Wikipedia it says that SPARS code were introduced in 1984. Of course, we all know that if it is on Wikipedia it just has to be true! Wikipedia has a reference to a physical magazine from 1984 and with a bit of searching I found someone who actually describes the same magazine and which seems to confim what Wikipedia says.
So, I wondered: how many releases are there in the Discogs database with a defined SPARS code field (containing a valid SPARS code) and a declared release date prior to 1984?
I was surprised to find 30 releases with a SPARS code and a release date prior to 1984. I had expected fewer. Most of these were CDs where the release date was listed as 1983 and other people had already noticed that some of the artwork and layout were actually indicating a later release date.
What was more surprising is that I also found one vinyl LP (possibly) with a SPARS code that was claiming it was from 1978 actually pre-dating SPARS, the organization that invented the codes!
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| Releases in Discogs with a SPARS code before SPARS codes were invented |
My guess is that there actually are more releases with this error, as there are still more than 39,000 releases with a SPARS code, but where the SPARS Code field is not used, so I might revisit this topic in the (not so near) future, as soon as significantly more releases use this field.
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