Style/Specific types of releases/Audiobook

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Status: This page describes an active style guideline proposal and is not official.



Proposal number: RFC-STYLE-181
Champion: LordSputnik
Current status: RFC



JIRA ticket http://tickets.musicbrainz.org/browse/STYLE-181

Introduction

Currently, audiobooks in MusicBrainz are a bit of a mess. Release and track titles are fairly random across the range of audiobooks. This proposal aims to fix that by bringing in consistent guidelines for audiobooks.

Proposal

Add the following wiki page to the Style/Specific_types_of_releases/:

An audiobook is a book read by one or more narrators.

For the purposes of this guideline, a "narrator" is any voice actor appearing on the audiobook.

Release Title

The release title should be the title of the audiobook. The usual guidelines for release titles apply.

Release Artist

The release artist should be the author(s) of the book being read, followed by a join phrase such as "read by" or "narrated by", followed by the narrator(s). When in doubt about which narrator to include in the title, follow the credits on the release cover.

In the rare case that the narrator is also the author of the book, simply use their name for the release artist. Also, if the author of the book is unknown, but the name of the narrator is known, credit the narrator only.

For example:

  • "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin read by Roy Dotrice
  • "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" by J. K. Rowling read by Stephen Fry
  • "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams (author same as narrator)

Track Title

Tracks titles should be based on the following guidelines. Note, that if the release is not an English language release, "Chapter" and "Part" can be translated as described in Style/Titles/Part_numbers:

Releases split into chapters

If the release has tracks based on chapter boundaries, then each track should ideally be named:

  • Chapter X: "Chapter Title" if the track contains a complete chapter.
  • Chapter X: "Chapter Title", Part N if a single chapter is split over multiple tracks.
  • Chapters X-Y if a multiple chapters are contained in a single track.

If chapter names aren't listed on the release, attempt to find them on the internet. Many books have chapter listings online that can be used for this purpose. If chapter names are unavailable they can be left out of the track title, but this should be avoided where possible.

Releases with no chapters

Any release which doesn't split tracks based on chapter boundaries should have tracks named:

  • Part N

Releases containing multiple books

Releases which contain several books should have the book name added to each beginning of each track title:

  • "Book Title", Chapter X: "Chapter Title", Part N
  • "Book Title", Chapter X: "Chapter Title"
  • "Book Title", Chapter X-Y
  • "Book Title", Part N

Boundaries

If one chapter ends in the middle of a track and the next chapter begins in that same track, the track should be named according to Style/Titles/Multiple_titles - i.e. use two titles separated by space, slash, space. For example:

  • Chapter X: "Chapter Title 1", Part N / Chapter X+1: "Chapter Title 2", Part 1

The same applies to book boundaries:

  • "Book Title 1", Chapter X: "Chapter Title", Part N / "Book Title 2", Chapter 1: "Chapter Title", Part 1

Track Artist

The track artist should be the same as the release artist, unless it is known that one of the narrators isn't featured on a particular track. In these cases, credit the author along with the known narrators.

Relationships

Relate all tracks on the release to the narrators that appear on them, using the spoken vocals relationship.

If a track features a theme or background music, also add relationships for the performers of the music, where known.