Editing Style: Live bootlegs

(from [https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Specific_types_of_releases/Live_bootlegs MusicBrainz])

== Guidelines ==

The following rules apply when titling a live bootleg release group:

# Live bootlegs without a title ''must'' be named by concatenating its date and location information.
#* Syntax: "''YYYY-MM-DD: Location''".
# Live bootlegs with a title ''may'' be extended with date and location information as follows: 
#* Syntax: "''[YYYY-MM-DD: ]Title[: Location]''".
#* If there is alternative dividing punctuation mark at the end of the title such as the question mark (?) or exclamation point (!), use that mark instead of the colon.
# The location ''must'' be formatted using the city and country, and ''may'' include a venue and/or state.
#* Syntax: "''[Venue, ]City, [State, ]Country''". 

=== Notes ===
* The parts in square brackets are optional.
* ''YYYY-MM-DD'' is the date of the recording including the year (YYYY), month (MM) and day of month (DD).
* ''Venue'' is the name of the location where the concert took place (name of the hotel, stadium, hall, etc.).
* ''City'' can be the city, town or village.
* ''State'' is to further distinguish cities with identical names (such as ''Pasadena, TX'' in Texas vs ''Pasadena, CA'' in California) and may be refered to as a province in some countries. See [[State Abbreviations]].
* ''Country'' is the country.

==Additional Notes==

This guideline must not be used for live bootleg compilations, which are releases that collect tracks from different live sessions, e.g. [[Release:bbf5373b-72e4-4f99-91c9-8467da030316|A Highway of Diamonds, Volume 1: The Never Ending Tour]].

This guideline can be applied to release groups which feature a complete live session and additional bonus tracks (those can be live tracks from other concerts or studio recordings), e.g. [[Release:eeca59f9-cf55-4aba-89f7-f4bae8247ff5|2002-05-02: Ahoy, Rotterdam, Netherlands]].

If a live bootleg release is recorded in the Netherlands, put just "Netherlands" as the country as per the listing on the [[Release Country]] page.

==Rationale==

In a lot of cases the most important information for live bootlegs is the date when the concert took place. Hiding this information for bootlegs where the person who compiled the release added a title means, that it is harder to find a special recording of a live session, because live bootlegs often don't have a release date. 

Adding the venue is useful for finding all concerts an artist performed in one city over the years or all concerts that took place in a special location by using the search interface. Besides that this kind of information would be lost or nearly lost when it was added to the annotation. 

On the other hand, there are bootleg releases of special concerts that have a well known title. In those cases its normally appropriate to list them under their title only.  

==Examples==

=== Live bootlegs without a title === 

;[http://musicbrainz.org/release/5555caea-3de8-480b-9952-421471a62517 2002-05-02: Ahoy, Rotterdam, Netherlands]
; [http://musicbrainz.org/release/b48c4e7a-21ae-408d-88a3-b56e3d2e44da 1993-02-12 to 1993-02-26: Pachyderm Studios, Cannon Falls, MN, USA]
: A studio session bootleg spanning several consecutive dates.
=== Live bootlegs with a well-known title === 

;[http://musicbrainz.org/release/07d62425-10da-4dc7-b20f-0c4e6c3f1c43 Gaslight Tapes]
: (may be replaced with a better one, as this is quasi-legitimate).
;[http://musicbrainz.org/release/4bdea6ad-1285-4097-9274-cfe96458cdaa Elvis Has Just Left the Building]
: (A collection of live Elvis covers by Led Zeppelin spanning multiple dates.  Should not be extended.) 
; [http://musicbrainz.org/release/1c268fa3-6218-4ff4-8be7-c7a51200438f 1980-07-07: Eternal Magic: Eissporthalle, Berlin, Germany]
: A complete show, or at least all tracks from the same show, released under multiple titles [Eternal Magic, Heineken] can be extended with date/venue information, using the first or most common "title" of the bootleg.
; [http://musicbrainz.org/release/3d2d66bc-9073-42ed-b9d8-6d576e778cf7 1980-12-21: Before the Exile! Rainbow Theatre, London, UK]
: This shows how punctuation marks replace the colon.