An album is sometimes released with additional tracks later; we consider that a release of the album rather than a new album. So here’s an interesting question: when a particular song is released as a single in different variants (that is, with different other songs), are those different albums, or are they different releases of the same album?
As a concrete example, Jethro Tull’s song “Said She Was a Dancer,” from
Crest of a Knave
, was released as a 7" single with “Dogs in the Midwinter” as the B side, as a 7" single with “The Waking Edge” as the B side, as a cassingle with both songs, and as a 12" single with “Dogs in the Midwinter,” “Down at the End of Your Road,” and “Too Many Too.” Do we create a single album with three alternate releases, or four separate albums with different track lists?
Modeling single releases
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I'd vote for alternate releases in cases like that, where they would all be considered "single" releases of "Said She Was a Dancer". In general, if a short-form release doesn't have its own title independent of the A-song being released, it goes in as one of the single releases of that song.
To facilitate this (and for other reasons), I would like to suggest that one of the attributes of the "Musical Release" object be Format, where the choices for format would be things like "12-inch vinyl, 33 1/3 rpm", "Compact Disc", "Cassette", "8-track tape", etc.
Other attributes that belong in Musical Release are Catalog Number and Mono/Stereo/Quad.
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