Soundtrack Style

Performer. WIthout this, Works performances lists are completely useless — this is already the case for much classical, e.g. http://musicbrainz.org/work/9e00ce98-e4 … 96a5c60c59

Of course, if the composer did also perform it as is sometimes the case for soundtracks it’s OK for them to be the same.

I got several performer as track artists edits voted down on OST (even when the performer is clearly credited, even when the performer is the only credited people on back cover).
I think this is wrong to credit James Horner for Titanic song, it’s always the same example I give but no voters never dare to change this particular one, while still voting no on less mainstream edits.

I was just looking at a Disney soundtrack and I came back to this topic. I've changed my mind - I now think performer should be credited. There's of course the Titanic example, and also the Disney song 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' which should obviously be credited to Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. I don't even know or care who wrote it!

However, what if the composer of the song is more famous than the performer, and the performer is unheard of? For example "I Just Can't Wait to be King" is written by Elton John, who's quite famous, but performed in the film by Jason Weaver. Should Elton John or Jason Weaver be credited?

I have some bad feelings about this statement. I don't think any encyclopedia should concern about what people thinks or cares about which artist should be credited as main artist. An encyclopedia only should hold facts, which is defined by the makers of the data.
If people are trying to define the release or track artists again, that would mean either the Musicbrainz is not an encyclopedia or users of Musicbrainz is not aware that it is an encyclopedia...

Just because I don't currently care who wrote it, it doesn't mean I won't at some point in the future. I certainly care that the information is included in MusicBrainz. There are a huge number of things that I don't care about on Wikipedia for example, but that doesn't mean that the information should be deleted!

However, MusicBrainz isn't just an encyclopaedia, it's a music tagging database. And certain people will want to see the track performer in their media player, and certain people will want to see the composer. The question is, which is correct to put on tracks? This cannot be answered logically, and so we must concern ourselves with what the majority of people want to see when they look at a track, surely?

Also, just noticed this:

http://musicbrainz.org/recording/700d21 … bb36e16f10

This is not correct information. It is completely incorrect. Frank Churchill did not make this recording. Therefore performers should be credited as the recording artists, for definite. Composers should be credited using the composer relationship on the recording, or in a work linked to a recording.

I agree that track lists should be as they are on the release.

I might have a go at writing an updated proposal for this later, taking into account ideas here and on the discussion for the existing soundtrack proposal. I'll post it here and on the mailing list for comments when I'm done, and we'll see how things go.

But you have to admit, more people use MusicBrainz (via Picard/Banshee/Rhythmbox/other media software) to tag their music collections than they do to look up information for their own personal knowledge.

Regardless of the usage or purpose of MusicBrainz, the way that seems best for it to work, to me, is:

The track artist will be applied to the artist field of the music file when tagging, so that should be as it appears on the release - you should see the same thing in your music player as if you looked on the back of the CD.

The recording artist should be the principle artist(s) who recorded the song. It makes no sense, ever, for a recording artist to be the composer, unless the composer also performed on the recording. Additional artists can be credited via relationships (eg. played instrument on).

I see "Work" as a synonym for "composition". For example, as in "The Complete Works of Shakespeare". The work artist should be the artist who wrote the song.

Works should be linked to Recordings via the "performance of..." relationship. That way recordings also show the composer, and works show recordings of the song.

Tracks are already linked to the recordings when adding a release, so they'll show all of this information.

That's not what I meant. I meant that the track names should match the track names on the CD case, and the track artists should match the track artists on that case.

I agree, artists on recordings should only be credited through their relationships, in an ideal MusicBrainz.

Whether intended to be compositions or not, everyone uses them for that, and it seems to be working, So why not define them like that?

The reason why artists were removed from works (which in pre-beta versions of the NGS schema, they did have) was that a work doesn't really have an "artist" - it has composers, or lyricists, or writers, or arrangers, and those should be entered with the appropriate relationships (even though that kinda goes against the standard imagining of the term, which calls a work "a Beatles song" or "a Bach prelude")

The problem with "artists", as in release artists, recording artists, etc, is that they're air - they don't really mean anything. It is basically "whoever happened to be credited for that", which can be the performer, the remixer, or a random guy who isn't even doing anything (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli ). while relationships credit the stuff that actually is related to the music.