History:Featuring Artist Style: Difference between revisions
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{{official style guideline}} |
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=Style for Featuring Artists= |
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This guideline applies to cases in which one or more artists are ''featured'' on a track or release by another artist, but not equally as they would be in a [[Collaboration Relationship Type|collaboration]]. That is, they are given credit on the cover or track listing of a release by another artist in a manner which elevates their contribution above normal liner note credits. Often, the word "featured", "feat." or "featuring" proceeds their name(s). |
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[[Image:Alert.png]] '''Attention!''' ''The guideline is/was being disputed and is to change soon, after SG5DisasterRelief. See [[Featuring Artist Style#houston|below]].'' |
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== |
== Guideline == |
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# File the track/release under the normal primary artist. |
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# Append the name of the secondary artist(s) to the [[Track Title]]/[[Release Title]] as follows: |
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#* "''Put Your Lights On (feat. Everlast)''" |
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</ul> |
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# Add [[Advanced Relationships]] of the [[:Category:Performance Relationship Class|Performance Relationship Class]] to link to the featured artist(s') entries in MusicBrainz. |
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=== Notes === |
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'''If neither artist can be considered secondary, choose either artist.''' |
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Ordering of [[Extra Title Information]] which includes FeaturingArtistStyle, [[Part Number|PartNumber]], [[Track Version|TrackVersion]] can be found under [[Track Title|TrackTitle]]. |
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<span id="houston"></span> |
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==What the Hell Is Going On?== |
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An artist being featured or not can vary for the same track, depending on the context. For example, The song ''"Under Pressure"'' may have been initially credited as a collaborative effort by David Bowie and Queen ([http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=437665 e.g.]), but may be credited differently on their respective compilations. e.g., a David Bowie compilation might give Queen a featuring credit ([http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=238538 e.g.]), rather than a additional primary artist credit, or might not credit them outside of the liner notes at all ([http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=1054835 e.g.]). Use FeaturingArtistStyle or [[Collaboration Relationship Type|CollaborationRelationshipType]] as appropriate, but do not attempt to unify all instances to the same format. |
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The old FeaturingArtistStyle is very disputed. There were numerous attempts of [[Getting Rid Of Featuring Artist Style|GettingRidOfFeaturingArtistStyle]]. Several lengthy and heated discussions happened on the [[Style Mailing List|StyleMailingList]] (and only there. A huge section of the users never knew what happened). Finally a new guideline was proposed (see below). |
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* '''Note''': The last sentence here conflicts with the style principle of [[Consistent Original Data]] and is thus disputed within the community. |
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During these discussions we found out that the [[Style Council|StyleCouncil]] lacked procedures for deciding upon issues. The majority of the members of the [[Style Council|StyleCouncil]] supported the new guideline in an apache-like vote launced by [[User:RodBegbie|RodBegbie]]. This vote however has no legitimity. |
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==Details== |
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Finally the new guideline was made quasi official by [[User:Zout|Zout]] on 15-11-2005 by changing this wiki page. He did so because it was supported by a majority of those people ''that took part in the discussion''. But there was no legitimate decision. |
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* The [[Track Artist|TrackArtist]]/[[Release Artist|ReleaseArtist]] is the main artist a track/release is credited to. This means, the artist mentioned on the release cover (in most cases the front cover), package or any other labelled package like entity that describes the release (e.g. release page for online releases). |
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The moment that it was being applied, other people have raised strong objections to the new guideline, mainly because it forced editors to change albums into [[Various Artist|VariousArtist]] albums. |
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* For additional contributors who didn't perform on the track, use the various [[Advanced Relationships|AdvancedRelationships]] to define their roles in relation to the track. Those can be contributors to the technical production process (mixers, producers, record engineers, etc.), remixers and others. The different roles are explained in [[:Category:Compilation Relationship Class|Compilation Relationship Class]], [[:Category:Composition Relationship Class|Composition Relationship Class]], [[:Category:Production Relationship Class|Production Relationship Class]], [[:Category:Remix Relationship Class|Remix Relationship Class]]. ''Note, that composers are often the '''main''' artists of classical releases (see [[Classical Style Guide|ClassicalStyleGuide]]) and remixers or compilers can also be main artists if they fit into 1.'' |
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* If a track features both "Foo" and "Bar", it should be entered as "... (feat. Foo & Bar)". For more than two: "... (feat. Foo, Bar, Baz ... & Quux)". |
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To end this chaos [[User:TarragonAllen|TarragonAllen]] has been made [[Style Council Leader|StyleCouncilLeader]]. He has made clear that, since no legitimate decision was made, '''the old guideline must be considered official at the moment.''' |
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The unsanctioned proposed alternative can be found on [[Featuring Artist Style Alternative|FeaturingArtistStyleAlternative]] (since it is not official it does not belong on this page). |
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On the [[MusicBrainz Summit 7|MusicBrainzSummit7]] an [[SG5 Disaster Relief|SG5DisasterRelief]] has been conceived and is being developed. |
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==History of the Guideline== |
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There was a lot of discussion going on on the [[Mailing List|MailingList]] regarding this guideline (10/2004). General consensus seems to be that we want to scrap this guideline, however there is no "good" way to to do this with the present system and so work on this will be postponed until [[Advanced Relationships|AdvancedRelationships]] comes in. In this process the [[Versus Style|VersusStyle]] will probably be changed as well. |
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See the [http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-users/2004-October/018504.html discussion thread for more details]. |
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Now that [[Advanced Relationships|AdvancedRelationships]] is available, the removal of this guideline has been brought up again. The newest discussion on the mb-users list can be found [http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-users/2005-April/020491.html here]. |
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Nothing has really changed since then and in 10/2005 [[User:RodBegbie|RodBegbie]] has raised this issue again in [http://www.nabble.com/For-the-love-of-god%2C-let's-sort-out-this-(feat)-nonsense-t421143c2885.html this email thread]. This [[Open Style Issue|OpenStyleIssue]] is on the agenda for the [[MusicBrainz Summit 7|MusicBrainzSummit7]] and is discussed in [[Getting Rid Of Featuring Artist Style|GettingRidOfFeaturingArtistStyle]]. |
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As of 15/11/2005 this guideline has been changed. A majority of users and members of the [[Style Council|StyleCouncil]] have agreed upon the new guideline as written above, although the decision process was quite messy, to say the least. |
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===Attempted summary of that discussion=== |
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By [[User:MatthewExon|MatthewExon]]. (this does not yet reflect the discussion of 10/2005) |
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There was some kind of consensus that the very best way to handle many of these collaborations would be to attach more than one primary artist to a song or an album, similar to how discogs does it. There was an objection that many applications expect a single primary artist, but this could be solved by just concatenating artists together with "&" for those applications. There was also (somewhere, can't find it now) an objection that this would be inefficient for the back end. The major problem with this, however, is that it's a pretty big upheaval of the database, requiring a huge amount of website code to change, and so this isn't going to happen any time soon. |
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In the meantime, the guidelines are there to try and strike a compromise between readability and usefulness now, and the ease of conversion to the above system whenever it becomes available. |
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The current, pre-[[Advanced Relationships|AdvancedRelationships]] FeaturingArtistStyle does this by arbitrarily choosing one artist to be primary, and putting the others in brackets with "feat.". This guideline is widely reviled because it's counter-intuitive and impedes searching for works by an artist. A script to convert to a full multi-artist system would have to parse out all the "feat." bits and figure out which artists were meant, intelligently bypassing commas and ampersands only where appropriate. |
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The alternative proposal is to add new artists representing the collaboration, called "X and Y" or something, and link both artists to the collaboration using "collaborated on" relationships (see [[Musical Association Relationship Class|MusicalAssociationRelationshipClass]]). |
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Problems with this: |
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* Will add thousands of pseudo-artists to the database, which strikes lots of people as counter-intuitive. |
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* Makes it harder to navigate from an artist to all of the works they actually performed on. |
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* Much slower to add these collaborations using the website, since you have to go through the palaver of adding new artists and setting up a bunch of relationships. |
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* Results in a mess like what's happened to Tom Morello (see [http://musicbrainz.org/showartist.html?artistid=202165 here] and [http://musicbrainz.org/showartist.html?artistid=178640 here]). |
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Advantages: |
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* Probably a cleaner way of setting ourselves up for the "nice" system above |
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* Means recording collaborations with actual artist IDs rather than merely putting their names in a freetext field |
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* Helps when trying to identify which tracks on different albums are actually just the same track |
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* Probably going to be more straightforward for a script to convert to the ideal situation above. |
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There's still lots of disagreement over which style is the best. In the database right now, we have a mixture of styles, depending largely on what made sense to the editor at the time. In the absence of a real consensus this seems likely to continue. Each style is particularly appropriate or inappropriate in certain situations, so even if we came up with an "official ruling", it'd probably be ignored by those users who don't read the mailing list ('desire lines', like David Scotson says). |
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[[Category:To Be Reviewed]] [[Category:Style]] [[Category:Official Style]] |
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Latest revision as of 11:51, 26 May 2015
| Status: This Page is Glorious History!
The content of this page either is bit-rotted, or has lost its reason to exist due to some new features having been implemented in MusicBrainz, or maybe just described something that never made it in (or made it in a different way), or possibly is meant to store information and memories about our Glorious Past. We still keep this page to honor the brave editors who, during the prehistoric times (prehistoric for you, newcomer!), struggled hard to build a better present and dreamed of an even better future. We also keep it for archival purposes because possibly it still contains crazy thoughts and ideas that may be reused someday. If you're not into looking at either the past or the future, you should just disregard entirely this page content and look for an up to date documentation page elsewhere. |
This guideline applies to cases in which one or more artists are featured on a track or release by another artist, but not equally as they would be in a collaboration. That is, they are given credit on the cover or track listing of a release by another artist in a manner which elevates their contribution above normal liner note credits. Often, the word "featured", "feat." or "featuring" proceeds their name(s).
Guideline
- File the track/release under the normal primary artist.
- Append the name of the secondary artist(s) to the Track Title/Release Title as follows:
- "Put Your Lights On (feat. Everlast)"
- Add Advanced Relationships of the Performance Relationship Class to link to the featured artist(s') entries in MusicBrainz.
Notes
Ordering of Extra Title Information which includes FeaturingArtistStyle, PartNumber, TrackVersion can be found under TrackTitle.
An artist being featured or not can vary for the same track, depending on the context. For example, The song "Under Pressure" may have been initially credited as a collaborative effort by David Bowie and Queen (e.g.), but may be credited differently on their respective compilations. e.g., a David Bowie compilation might give Queen a featuring credit (e.g.), rather than a additional primary artist credit, or might not credit them outside of the liner notes at all (e.g.). Use FeaturingArtistStyle or CollaborationRelationshipType as appropriate, but do not attempt to unify all instances to the same format.
- Note: The last sentence here conflicts with the style principle of Consistent Original Data and is thus disputed within the community.
Details
- The TrackArtist/ReleaseArtist is the main artist a track/release is credited to. This means, the artist mentioned on the release cover (in most cases the front cover), package or any other labelled package like entity that describes the release (e.g. release page for online releases).
- For additional contributors who didn't perform on the track, use the various AdvancedRelationships to define their roles in relation to the track. Those can be contributors to the technical production process (mixers, producers, record engineers, etc.), remixers and others. The different roles are explained in Compilation Relationship Class, Composition Relationship Class, Production Relationship Class, Remix Relationship Class. Note, that composers are often the main artists of classical releases (see ClassicalStyleGuide) and remixers or compilers can also be main artists if they fit into 1.
- If a track features both "Foo" and "Bar", it should be entered as "... (feat. Foo & Bar)". For more than two: "... (feat. Foo, Bar, Baz ... & Quux)".
