We currently have no style guideline covering the release label field, or about labels in general. The purpose of this ticket is to try and establish how the release label field should be used.

My understanding of fields at the release level is that they are intended to capture what is printed on the release, including record labels and imprints.

Often multiple labels are listed in various ways, and there seems to be some community consensus about picking the most specific label (so if a release is published under an imprint of a small label owned by a bigger label and all three are printed, we use only the imprint as a release label). Although some folks think it is important that the catalog number is also a factor, because it may determine which label's catalog that release is part of and then that should be the release label.

I encounter the most disagreement around labels for iTunes releases. The whole point of release level fields is to capture what is printed on the release, if there is only one record label printed on the release (as is the case with iTunes releases), it seems obvious to me that that is the record label which should be used. Some editors claim that iTunes lists copyright holders and not record labels. That seems a weird distinction to me, the copyright in a recording is typically owned by a record label, I don't understand why that would disqualify using the listed record label in the release label field.