Style/Relationships

This page outlines general guidelines that should be followed when adding AdvancedRelationships in order to have the database consistent and lists guidelines which are discussed and need yet to be agreed on.

Agreed On Guidelines

Note that most of the guidelines for AdvancedRelationships are kept in the style sections of the appropriate relationship types (or even have their own pages), so this should only be used for general guidelines.

For some general guidelines (or those which affect several relationship types) with their own pages, see:

• DontMakeRelationshipClusters
• Same Artist With Different Names

Discussing Guidelines

Some of those can probably be moved to the style section of the appropriate relationship type when agreed on instead of being listed in the section above.

Re-releases of covers

Tracks which are re-releases of a cover-version of a song should not have relationships of the CoverRelationshipType to the earliest release of the original version. Instead only the earliest release of the cover-version should link to the earliest release of the original version and all re-releases of the cover-version should be linked to their earliest release with the SameTrackRelationshipType.

Cover medleys

If an artist performs a medley of songs they didn't originally wrote, that is the medley is a bunch of covers, then should the original versions be linked with the MedleyRelationshipType or with the CoverRelationshipType?

Linking artists to all or only original releases?

Should artists that worked on a release/track only be linked to the original/regular release of it or to all of them? The answer to that can pretty much depend on the relationship type and if it's a track or a release. For featuring performers we currently encourage the users to link to all tracks. With releases it seems people mostly add credits from the liner notes if they own it, and the release they own doesn't have to be the original/regular release. Also it's not always possible to identify an original/regular release (see the EU release and the US release of this album for example). For composers and lyrics writers there seems to be agreement not to link them to re-releases/later versions.

Artist Role Inheritance & Track vs Release crediting

There are now multiple levels at which an artist's role on a song can be recorded: you can relate the artist to the song, to the album, or to the band that recorded the song. So it's now non-trivial to figure out the full list of people who should be credited for any given track.

1. If the relationship is applicable to all tracks on a release, put it on all the tracks, rather than on the release.
2. If the relationship is not applicable to all tracks, and you know which ones it applies to, put it on only those tracks.
3. If the relationship is not applicable to all tracks, and you don't know which ones it applies to, put it at release level. A basic effort to determine to which tracks the relationship is applicable is appreciated, however.
4. If the credit is release level, and does not apply on a track by track basis (e.g., graphic design for the album's cover), then apply the relationship to the release, not the tracks.

Note: There are still releases that do only have release level advanced relationships, predating the discussions as to where Advanced Relationships should be attached. These still need to be corrected. If you find a release with such release level Advanced Relationships that can be moved to the tracks, please fix them.

Line-up linking

Should the whole line-up for a release be linked or only session/guest musicians because the regular band members are already linked to the band? Of course this not always redundant, an artist can be member of a band but not perform on an album for whatever reasons.

Are session artists, which are not considered part of the band, always guest musicians? Or should the GuestRelationshipAttribute only be used when the liner notes call them guest musicians? Or can we perhaps work out our own definition for this attribute?