One category of releaes in Discogs are the "digital releases". Basically: MP3s or other digital formats from stores, iTunes releases, and so on. Call me old fashioned, but personally I don't see these as collectables, as to me they are just files on a computer or music player. But apparently many people disagree with that and collect them. In Discogs the digital releases have "File" in the format field. This makes it quite easy to recognize. So I wondered: how many of these "file" releases are there and where are they in the data? Is it mostly the newer releases, or are there also many older file releases? So I looked at everything in the latest data dump and found 917,569 releases that have "File" in the format field, which is about 10% of the releases in Discogs and 40% more than for example cassettes. Distribution of releases tagged as "File" in the Discogs data set So only in the very early days there were few "...
A blog dedicated to two of my hobbies: vinyl records and digital data and exploring where the two intersect. This blog is not affiliated with Discogs, but uses a lot of its data. On Discogs you can find me as metalmijn. I also get a lot of help from a friend you can find on Discogs as gerjolp Check out my Discogs cleanup scripts at: https://github.com/armijnhemel/cleanup-for-discogs/