Союз (Soyuz)

Союз (transliterated: Soyuz) is one of the largest Russian labels. Союз is a large holding that manages both manufacturing of CDs, distribution, concert booking agency, etc. From the MusicBrainz point of view, Союз makes releases of 2 types:

• Original production releases are given their unique catalog number like SZCD NNNN-YY, where NNNN is a sequential CD number, and YY are last 2 digits of release year.
• Russia- or CIS-only re-releases of licensed material from foreign labels. These releases usually have minor differences with the originals, such as:
  • Texts on covers and disc(s) that states that it's a licensed Союз CD, not an original one,
  • Союз's barcode, starting with 4601250, 460 being a Russian country code, 1250 being Союз's organization code.

In other respects (usually disc contents), they're the same as original ones.

Союз is one of the few record labels in Russia that uses barcodes on their CDs. However, only re-releases seem to have barcodes (placed over the original ones).

Useful links: Союз at zvuki.ru