History talk:Clarify Extra Title Information

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I'm unclear as to why all the variants that mean the same as "instrumental" are version info but "instrumental" isn't. It sounds like "instrumental" is being overloaded with two meanings. For example, last week these two songs were both released on singles:
安倍なつみ - スイートホリック - 03 - スイートホリック (instrumental) (4:23)
石川智晶 - 美しければそれでいい - 03 - 美しければそれでいい (without vocal) (4:01)
If you read the list above it'd indicate that the first isn't version info while the second is, even though they're both vocalless versions of the main track of each single. --DJKC

  • Indeed. It's somewhat tiresome that this has been written at all, as the recent discussions prove that it CAN be version info. I have revised the comment. --Gecks Well this list is an initial collection, of what kind of ExtraTitleInformation there is. IMO "version info" is no well defined term, and I have re-reworded the comments not to use it. The term might be useful in a general guideline, but a proposal would first have to define what "version info" means and when it can be used to decide whether to keep extra title information or not. --DonRedman While the list may not be very clear about this, the issue with "instrumental" is that indeed it is overloaded, but not by us, but by artists. Sometimes "instrumental" is used to diferentiate between the "no vocals" version of a song and the original "with vocals" one. But often (it's quite common in Rock music) a band will release an instrumental song (just without lyrics, with no other version), and on the cover they will still write "instrumental". It's this second case that bothers me and that's the initial starting point of this page. --Bogdanb
    • To clarify a bit: I don't argue that "instrumental" CAN be version info, it obviously does, I just mean that often, at least with Metal or Rock bands, it often isn't. It's that case that bothers me. --Bogdanb Other genres do that too. Hiphop does, and I've seen it with bitpop/chip tune/futurepop groups. The version info usage is a lot more common for them though. Same for rock though, for the groups I'm familiar with. --DJKC IMO extra title information doesn't have to be version info to be included in the title (I realise this debate is pending completion of this list but anyway). Like I said elsewhere, if a track was only ever recorded live, then "(live)" wouldn't be 'versioning info', but IMO it's still valid information I want to see in my tracktitles (assuming the artist did to). --Gecks I can't find anything about release titles here. How should we deal with things like "Album 12 - Special Edition" if "Album 12" is already on MBz, but has different (fewer) tracks? My feeling is to put "special edition" in lower case and in brackets, but some people want it removed entirely, although it does help to differentiate versions. --ArtySmokes

This list would also qualify as a summary of potential AdvancedRelationships that can be extracted from the data currently encoded in the title. --MartinRudat

What about translations?

It's entirely unclear to me from existing MB guidelines whether translations of song titles should be included in track titles. For instance, I have some Brazilian guitar music. The CD is in MB already, but with only the Portuguese song titles. The CD track listing itself, however, has Portuguese titles plus English translations in parentheses.

My first instinct is to include the translations since the CD does. But I can see the counterargument: if translations are included in track titles as Extra Title Information, different versions of the same song may appear to be totally different songs only because the original-language title was translated into two different languages.

For instance, suppose the song is originally German, and the title is Hoch. So on an English release, it might read Hoch (High). But on a French release, it might read Hoch (Haut).

So: Would it be better to include translations as Extra Title Information? Or would it be better to omit translations to maximize the ability to group different versions of the same song?

—bhagerty