the quest is to find the original year and label details for a
specific artist-song/song-artist that was released on a single,
and to do this efficiently
Tip 1.
After pasting or typing in the artist-song/song-artist at
https://www.discogs.com/ , click on "Releases" just below the search
box - this can bring the single closer to the top of the dropdown
list. While this web page is open it will stay on "Releases" for
further searches.
Tip 2.
If you know or suspect the single was first (or even only) issued in
the UK (or some other non-US country) then append that country to
the search string at
https://www.discogs.com/ . Why? - because
otherwise the dropdown search results will give priority to US
releases of any format. For instance, try searching in turn for this
UK only single:
Phantoms Phantom Guitar {9th out of 10 in dropdown}
note: it was close to not being on the dropdown list at all
Phantoms Phantom Guitar UK {3rd out of 10 in dropdown}
and if "Releases" has been selected (instead of default "Everything"):
Phantoms Phantom Guitar {6th out of 10 in dropdown}
Phantoms Phantom Guitar UK {2nd out of 10 in dropdown}
Tip 3.
If the single can't be seen in the auto dropdown list then, rather
than going thru to the next page and hunting thru many found items,
it's may be much more efficient to use Discogs Advanced Search:
1. at
https://www.discogs.com/ go to (in menu at top of page)
Explore > Advanced Search
2. change Type from "All" to "Master Releases" (important!)
3. fill in the following fields (can be all in lower-case):
By Artist {eg: the platters}
Track Title {eg: smoke gets in your eyes}
Format: single
Country {us not usa}
then click on Search at bottom right
4. (optional on search results page) change Sort (on right) from
"Relevance" to "Year, Oldest First"
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)