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Which Label Code is used the most in Discogs?

The field in the Discogs database that is definitely the most misunderstood is the so called "Label Code". Many people think that this is a generic "catch all" field for any code printed on a label, but that is COMPLETELY WRONG. The Label Code is a (somewhat) unique identifier for a record label. It was introduced in Europe somewhere in the 1970s and is now in widespread use. This is all explained in the other articles I have written about this field and I recommend you read those first (especially the first article).

Many Discogs contributors think that just because there is a code on a label it should be in the Label Code field. In the latest download (all releases up until October 31 2019) there are a bit over 44,000 releases that have a wrong value in this field. That's quite a few.

Then there are also releases where a Label Code should be present, but isn't (and of course I don't know how many), plus around 9,000 where someone indicated that there could be a Label Code (including wrong ones, I didn't check there) but where the wrong field was used.

For the following tests I ignored all of those and focused on the Label Codes where I was 100% certain that they were correct:

  1. letters "LC"
  2. 4 to 6 digits
The first requirement means that I missed out on some valid entries as some people do not enter the "LC" part in the Label Code field even though the guidelines require it. However, ignoring the entries with just digits made it easier to focus on the ones where I could be certain. In the early days of the label code only 4 digits were used, but that didn't turn out to be enough and these days all label codes are 5 digits, or even 6 digits. I left padded all label code values with zeroes so they are all 6 digits.

I looked at 732,368 Label Code fields, of which 701,214 were found to be valid according to the criteria above. I found 12,079 unique label codes. The top 10:

  1. LC 000309: 23064 (Polydor)
  2. LC 003098: 20591 (Virgin)
  3. LC 000542: 20498 (EMI)
  4. LC 000149: 18328 (CBS)
  5. LC 000316: 18152 (RCA)
  6. LC 000162: 16573 (Columbia)
  7. LC 000199: 15550 (Epic)
  8. LC 000268: 12705 (Mercury)
  9. LC 004281: 11747 (WEA)
  10. LC 000116: 11500 (Ariola)
and after that there is a looooong list with fewer and fewer releases per label code (for example: there are 3314 label codes associated with just a single entry).

I am certain that people mistyped digits, so the results are most probably not entirely accurate. I have not checked that, as that will take more time to write the code to map label names back to label codes, and time is something I currently don't have.

Just for completeness, here is the top 50 of Label Codes that were found. Please note: they have been padded to 6 digits, so when searching you might want to remove the first zero or the first two zeroes. For a list of some of the label codes I recommend to look at this Discogs forum post.

  1. LC 000309: 23064
  2. LC 003098: 20591
  3. LC 000542: 20498
  4. LC 000149: 18328
  5. LC 000316: 18152
  6. LC 000162: 16573
  7. LC 000199: 15550
  8. LC 000268: 12705
  9. LC 004281: 11747
  10. LC 000116: 11500
  11. LC 000407: 9945
  12. LC 000392: 8920
  13. LC 000173: 8123
  14. LC 006350: 8029
  15. LC 000485: 7165
  16. LC 000121: 7143
  17. LC 001846: 6589
  18. LC 007027: 6191
  19. LC 000299: 6014
  20. LC 000171: 5744
  21. LC 003484: 5605
  22. LC 001056: 5340
  23. LC 000148: 5126
  24. LC 006448: 5021
  25. LC 000305: 4339
  26. LC 005834: 4266
  27. LC 000835: 3985
  28. LC 001557: 3956
  29. LC 007800: 3786
  30. LC 007654: 3650
  31. LC 007266: 3626
  32. LC 001633: 3497
  33. LC 002516: 3442
  34. LC 006975: 3392
  35. LC 006406: 3329
  36. LC 005680: 3196
  37. LC 000192: 3158
  38. LC 000270: 3020
  39. LC 001626: 2963
  40. LC 003706: 2915
  41. LC 000322: 2789
  42. LC 007925: 2755
  43. LC 005537: 2716
  44. LC 000967: 2679
  45. LC 009231: 2580
  46. LC 000383: 2563
  47. LC 006646: 2550
  48. LC 000881: 2421
  49. LC 006868: 2419
  50. LC 001666: 2262


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