How to determine the quantity of physical pressings for an album?

October 4, 2014 5:10 PM

I would like to know how many pressings for any given recording were produced (with ease).

I am a vinyl collector familiar with the process of searching for an album by its ISRC or catalog number to determine its estimated value amongst other details, but I am curious as to whether there is something along the lines of a custom curated database or even more obvious standard that provides information on the amount of physical copies produced for a record release.

In many cases I have been able to track this information down from totally random sources ranging from Reddit to Discogs to the record label itself, but I'm primarily looking for a one-stop resource.

Thanks AskMeFi.

posted by swoopstake to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

There certainly is no one definitive source - if anywhere were to collect this data it would have to be either submitted by users or by each record label. So I'm fairly sure there is nobody who does that. Discogs is the closest you're likely to come, but they don't even have a database column for that, and it just gets written in as "Notes" or whatever.
posted by aubilenon at 5:19 PM on October 4, 2014

Even going to the label will get you a number subject to Hollywood Accounting, since it's a number that is used to calculate royalties. Besides that, the best way to determine the value of a record is previous selling prices.
posted by rhizome at 5:35 PM on October 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

this information is not readily available.

you should be wary of discogs numbers- unless there's an actual difference to a second pressing (vinyl color, cover image, alternate tracklist, etc) they rarely create a new entry or edit the original to indicate there were additional copies pressed.
posted by noloveforned at 6:32 PM on October 4, 2014