No Artist Style: Difference between revisions

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#REDIRECT [[Style/Unknown and untitled/Special purpose artist]]
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'''Recordings that have no artist should be filed under the [[Special Purpose Artist|SpecialPurposeArtist]] <code><nowiki>[no artist]</nowiki></code>. This would be appropriate for silence, bird song etc.'''
<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">This is an [[Official Style Guideline|OfficialStyleGuideline]].
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==Example==

Radio talk on [http://www.musicbrainz.org/album/b32a8d4e-a7b9-40af-a060-6e0ba0e37b24.html Bounce FM in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas].

==Rationale==

Some recordings just don't have a performer of discographic relevance credited. For them the [[Special Purpose Artist|SpecialPurposeArtist]] [http://www.musicbrainz.org/showartist.html?artistid=105725 no artist] is to be used. Note that artists can record noise they did not produce themselves but still release it under their name. For them this artist is not to be used. It is also not to be used for [[Fictitious Artist|FictitiousArtist]]<code><nowiki></nowiki></code>s.

==Discussion==

i don't think that [noartist] is appropriate for silence. First, we must distinguish digital and non-digital silence. In the case of non-digital silence, there may be small artifacts and background noise in the silence which are, in fact, part of the composition. This is, believe it or not, the premise behind a very famous piece of entirely 'silent' music (i.e. there are no notes in the score) called 4'33" by John Cage. If this piece were filed under [no artist] that would be a mistake. if such a track appears on an 'album' i think it should be credited to the album artist, since it was clearly their choice to place the silence there--even in the case of digital silence, the presence of a silent track affects the proportions of the album, or of a set of tracks which form one piece, much as rests in a piece of music are still part of that piece of music, and thus are rests written by that composer--when Beethoven writes rests, they are Beethoven's rests, and when Haydn writes rests they are Haydn's rests--the same goes for silent tracks, one only has to look beyond the single-track conception of what constitutes the musical work to see this.
<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">It won't be filed under [no artist] if it's on a normal album of that artist. This is only used for VA albums or entire albums without an artist - and only if needed. --[[User:Shepard|Shepard]]
<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">on a VA album, shouldn't the silence be attributed to whoever chose to put the silence there? granted, sometimes this will be 'unknown', but it would never be true that there is 'no artist' because the decision was made by some group or individual to place the silence there.. --adamgolding also, when there is no clear 'traditional' artist for the album, why not credit it to the record label? it was they, presumably, who decided to complie the tracks in this fashion etc. --adamgolding
<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">A record label is no artist. There is a person at the record label doing the compiling and mixing. They can be linked as that using [[Advanced Relationships|AdvancedRelationships]]. But they are not credited artists and the artist field is for credited artists only (normally, exception classical releases, but hey who likes that anyways ;) ). And as no real artist is credited, it is put to no artist. :) --[[User:Shepard|Shepard]]
</ul>I'm slightly confused by the subtle (but perhaps important) difference between [noartist] and [unknown]. At the time of writing there are a bunch of Sound Effects albums credited to [noartist]. There clearly was an artist (or artists) involved in recording and processing the effects, so I would think [unknown] would be better. Even recording birdsong takes some artistry. I can't find a page listing the precise difference between the two tags I've mentioned, so I'm unsure what to do for tracks on compilations that are silent or contain some noise but do not mention an artist. Can this be clarified somewhere? --artysmokes
<ul><li style="list-style-type:none">The main definition for [[Primary Artist|PrimaryArtist]] is the "most prominently featured performer" of a tune (except for stuff which is composer-styled). Following that, [unknown] should be used when the information is yet to be found (even if finding it is near impossible), while [noartist] should be used when there is no performer (there can still be a recording engineer, etc). While of course I understand that it may be difficult in some cases, and that (for example) some silent tracks ought to be credited to artist X (say John Cage), or that there are indeed some corner cases, [no artist] really has uses: first, don't clutter [unknown] with things that have no reason to be there, second, don't alter the meaning of [[Primary Artist|PrimaryArtist]] (as performer). Really, there is no value in trying to figure out what should be the artist for (example) "engines sounds" - still if you know for example the engineer, please add the AR. Last, each time you edited a wikipage, you are messing the page footer: I asked you not to do that in the changenote quite a few times, but you keep doing it. Can you please stop? Thanks! -- [[User:dmppanda|dmppanda]] 15:33, 02 June 2007 (UTC)
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[[Category:To Be Reviewed]] [[Category:Style]] [[Category:Official Style]]

Latest revision as of 19:26, 19 May 2011