year not displayed at album-level
For artists with independently released albums, most of their independent albums aren't displaying year in the discography. However, those independent albums show year at the release-level.
For artists with independently released albums, most of their independent albums aren't displaying year in the discography. However, those independent albums show year at the release-level.
One of the flaws of our data is that the release date that shows up at the album level is a manually-submitted Original Album Release Date field simply because the earliest product-level release information isn't reliable enough to determine when the album (as a work) was actually released.
The primary albums on major (and popular indie) distributors get this hand-picked data field, but the tens of thousands of extremely indie albums that get released don't get this attention.
Zac, I assume that your first paragraph describes when the database doesn't have the Original Album Release Date. I can't imagine even indie distributors not providing a basic data field like year.
For reissues of an original release that's in your database, the earliest year should automatically populate as the Original Album Release Date. Example: Down & Dirty...Plus is a reissue of its original album in 1980, but its Original Album Release Date didn't populate in the discography.
Zac, data-entry apparently stopped after 2016 to manually input the Original Album Release Date for Free Dirt Records. (Example below hasn't been corrected.)