1 Topic by UnrealMiniMe (edited by UnrealMiniMe 2012-09-12 21:58:03)

  • Registered: 2012-08-31

Topic: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

The new guidelines indicate that we should be including both the composer and the major performers in the release artist field, and I assume in the release group artist field as well.  As a consequence, release group and release titles should no longer include performer information.

In this case, is there any way where we can prominently specify each artist's specific role in the release, e.g. listing the conductor as the conductor specifically?  Or is it necessary to actually create advanced relationships on a per-track basis (or per-recording basis)?

Regardless, I've run into a usability problem:  I tried to edit this release (http://musicbrainz.org/release/b013a2ff … 33a5006f00) to conform to the new guidelines, but I ended up running into a brick wall, because changing the release artist field changed the track artist fields as well.  I found that I had to go into each track individually to remove every artist except the composer, and since copy/pasting wouldn't work for this purpose, the whole process was just too time-consuming to consider it worthwhile.  Since the artist for individual tracks should be listed as the composer only, is there any easy way to make this alteration across a large number of tracks, while leaving all artists intact for the recording as specified by the guidelines?

Ultimately, I left the above release unchanged.  I did however edit the release group (http://musicbrainz.org/release-group/4d … 9461cccf5a) to conform to the new guidelines the best I could, and my edit notes here (http://musicbrainz.org/edit/19009361) raise another issue:

How exactly should we be dealing with "artist credits" on classical releases?  There are two separate problems at work here:

First, there are at least two different releases corresponding to the same release group I tried (see http://musicbrainz.org/release/b013a2ff … 33a5006f00 and http://www.amazon.com/Shostakovich-Comp … 0F3T7RO/), and it is probably only by coincidence that they both stylized Shostakovich's name as "last name only."  Should the artist credit really be simply "Shostakovich" in this case, when different releases in the same release group could plausibly write the composer's name differently on the packaging?

Second, artist credits combine with the difficulty I had above with release artists being copied over to track artists.  The box for the release I'm interested in (a US or worldwide version of the above release) lists the composer as "Shostakovich" (last name only), while the CD booklets containing the track list name him as "Dmitri Shostakovich" with no middle name.  Which should be used for track artists if any, and how exactly are "artist credits" used from a tagging standpoint?  Should any "artist credits" be used at all for classical composers, or should I let that field default to the actual artist name?  Even for the names of orchestras, I imagine people are more likely to prefer regional aliases if possible rather than the ad hoc names listed on the packaging.

After all, I can hardly imagine classical music fans wanting to tag their music in accordance with the whims of the box art designers or CD booklet typists.  (Heck, I somehow doubt people will want to do this even for popular artists like Jay-Z who might play with the formatting of their names on each release.)  Most likely, they'll want to tag all of their music from the same composer using the composer's actual name (in this case "Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович") or primary regional alias (in this case "Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich").  Having such mismatched tags would kind of defeat the purpose of meticulous musical tagging in the first place.

It seems that this dilemma is exactly what Picard's "Use standardized artist names" option is for, but when it comes to classical releases, my questions still stand as to when I should be applying "artist credits" to releases and tracks, especially when the naming of the artist differs on the outer package and inner booklets (where the tracks are often listed for larger releases).  So, in short...exactly how should I be handling all this?

Relevant guidelines:
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Classi … ease/Title
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Classi … ase/Artist
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Classical/Track/Artist
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Classi … ing/Artist
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Artist_Credit

  • From: Tartu, EE
  • Registered: 2010-11-24

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

UnrealMiniMe wrote:

The new guidelines indicate that we should be including both the composer and the major performers in the release artist field, and I assume in the release group artist field as well.  As a consequence, release group and release titles should no longer include performer information.

In this case, is there any way where we can prominently specify each artist's specific role in the release, e.g. listing the conductor as the conductor specifically?  Or is it necessary to actually create advanced relationships on a per-track basis (or per-recording basis)?

Relationships are the way - but per-recording relationships can be batch-created, anyway, so it doesn't take too long.

UnrealMiniMe wrote:

Regardless, I've run into a usability problem:  I tried to edit this release (http://musicbrainz.org/release/b013a2ff … 33a5006f00) to conform to the new guidelines, but I ended up running into a brick wall, because changing the release artist field changed the track artist fields as well.  I found that I had to go into each track individually to remove every artist except the composer, and since copy/pasting wouldn't work for this purpose, the whole process was just too time-consuming to consider it worthwhile.  Since the artist for individual tracks should be listed as the composer only, is there any easy way to make this alteration across a large number of tracks, while leaving all artists intact for the recording as specified by the guidelines?

Indeed. I think every classical editor I know uses http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/118491 - without that, I'd have gone mad long ago. And http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/128593 to relate stuff to works.

UnrealMiniMe wrote:

Ultimately, I left the above release unchanged.  I did however edit the release group (http://musicbrainz.org/release-group/4d … 9461cccf5a) to conform to the new guidelines the best I could, and my edit notes here (http://musicbrainz.org/edit/19009361) raise another issue:

How exactly should we be dealing with "artist credits" on classical releases?  There are two separate problems at work here:

First, there are at least two different releases corresponding to the same release group I tried (see http://musicbrainz.org/release/b013a2ff … 33a5006f00 and http://www.amazon.com/Shostakovich-Comp … 0F3T7RO/), and it is probably only by coincidence that they both stylized Shostakovich's name as "last name only."  Should the artist credit really be simply "Shostakovich" in this case, when different releases in the same release group could plausibly write the composer's name differently on the packaging?

I tend to use the credits for the earliest-released release in the group when they clash, unless another is more complete (say, a reissue has performer credits but the original does not).

UnrealMiniMe wrote:

Second, artist credits combine with the difficulty I had above with release artists being copied over to track artists.  The box for the release I'm interested in (a US or worldwide version of the above release) lists the composer as "Shostakovich" (last name only), while the CD booklets containing the track list name him as "Dmitri Shostakovich" with no middle name.  Which should be used for track artists if any, and how exactly are "artist credits" used from a tagging standpoint?  Should any "artist credits" be used at all for classical composers, or should I let that field default to the actual artist name?  Even for the names of orchestras, I imagine people are more likely to prefer regional aliases if possible rather than the ad hoc names listed on the packaging.

After all, I can hardly imagine classical music fans wanting to tag their music in accordance with the whims of the box art designers or CD booklet typists.  (Heck, I somehow doubt people will want to do this even for popular artists like Jay-Z who might play with the formatting of their names on each release.)  Most likely, they'll want to tag all of their music from the same composer using the composer's actual name (in this case "Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович") or primary regional alias (in this case "Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich").  Having such mismatched tags would kind of defeat the purpose of meticulous musical tagging in the first place.

It seems that this dilemma is exactly what Picard's "Use standardized artist names" option is for, but when it comes to classical releases, my questions still stand as to when I should be applying "artist credits" to releases and tracks, especially when the naming of the artist differs on the outer package and inner booklets (where the tracks are often listed for larger releases).  So, in short...exactly how should I be handling all this?

Here, I'd just go with Dmitri Shostakovich, but I admit it's not so much in order to follow the packaging, as to avoid having non-Latin characters in a Latin release - same way I'd use Иоганн Себастьян Бах and not Johann Sebastian Bach if I was editing a Cyrillic release. Mixing both just looks silly IMO, especially in releases which have some Western composers and some Russians/Georgians/Japanese. I don't know if there's any consensus about this, though.

3 Reply by UnrealMiniMe (edited by UnrealMiniMe 2012-09-12 23:49:40)

  • Registered: 2012-08-31

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

Thanks for the reply and the scripts!  I never knew about those, so I'll have to play around with them.

Regarding the artist credits:  You suggested using "Dmitri Shostakovich."  Is that for both the release artist and the track artist?  If it's really just to avoid mixing Latin and Cyrillic script though, and it has little to do with what's listed on the box or in the CD booklets, then wouldn't it make more sense to just use his official English locale alias, "Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich," with his middle name included?

  • From: Tartu, EE
  • Registered: 2010-11-24

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

UnrealMiniMe wrote:

Thanks for the reply and the scripts!  I never knew about those, so I'll have to play around with them.

Regarding the artist credits:  You suggested using "Dmitri Shostakovich."  Is that for both the release artist and the track artist?  If it's really just to avoid mixing Latin and Cyrillic script though, and it has little to do with what's listed on the box or in the CD booklets, then wouldn't it make more sense to just use his official English locale alias, "Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich," with his middle name included?

Maybe - it's just that for Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Stravinsky the patronymic almost *never* seems to be listed in actual releases. While for Tchaikovsky, it seems to almost *always* be, for some reason (no idea why).

5 Reply by UnrealMiniMe (edited by UnrealMiniMe 2012-09-13 18:38:14)

  • Registered: 2012-08-31

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

Yeah, it's a mess...which kind of illustrates why I'm so leery of using artist credits in the first place.  There just doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason as to how editors submit them.  For that matter, there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason as to how artists (or publishers) format artist and composer names on boxes and cases, either.

To my mind, artist credits are an elegant way to handle situations like featured artists in non-classical music and things like that.  Unfortunately, I think we're overusing them to preserve a half-dozen phrasings of the same artist name for various releases in the same region.  These phrasings are trivially different in meaning, but they would significantly harm the cleanliness of our music metadata if we ever actually tried used them for tagging.

Probably no classical fan is going to want various Shostakovich releases from the same country to be variously tagged as "Shostakovich," "Dmitri Shostakovich," and "Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich," let alone "Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович," so to avoid that, taggers are almost left no other option but to tag with standardized artist names (and regional aliases) and avoid utilizing artist credits entirely...even for situations where they might be useful, such as with featured artists in nonclassical music.

In other words, by overusing artist credits in the database, I think we're making them unusable for any practical purpose (e.g. tagging music), even in the cases where they would otherwise be useful.  I suppose these complaints belong on the style mailing list rather than this forum though...

  • From: Oakland
  • Registered: 2009-04-07

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

Unreal wrote:

... by overusing artist credits in the database, I think we're making them unusable for any practical purpose (e.g. tagging music), even in the cases where they would otherwise be useful.  I suppose these complaints belong on the style mailing list rather than this forum though...

Isn't that a problem for client apps to solve? I mean, ideally a music player would recognize artists by MBID, while letting me choose how those artists' names are displayed.

  • Registered: 2010-12-17

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

I think you’ll find that once you add any sort of i18n into the mix, artist credits become pretty useless for tagging anyway.

8 Reply by UnrealMiniMe (edited by UnrealMiniMe 2012-09-14 14:27:54)

  • Registered: 2012-08-31

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

caller#6 wrote:
Unreal wrote:

... by overusing artist credits in the database, I think we're making them unusable for any practical purpose (e.g. tagging music), even in the cases where they would otherwise be useful.  I suppose these complaints belong on the style mailing list rather than this forum though...

Isn't that a problem for client apps to solve? I mean, ideally a music player would recognize artists by MBID, while letting me choose how those artists' names are displayed.

You're right that clients could allow you to choose how artists' names are displayed.  However, if you're talking about actual music playback clients (e.g. iTunes, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Amarok...), this would have to be a very coarse-grained choice:  You could use standardized names for all music, or regional aliases for all music, or artist credits for all music...but artist credits are currently way too overused and abused for that purpose, because using artist credits for all music in this way would mean your artist fields would be a total mess.  As a result, you'd have no choice but to avoid artist credits entirely (and use standardized names or regional aliases), even in cases where they might truly be useful.

There are a number of cases where artist credits can really come in handy (and I'm sure I'm missing some), if we can separate them from the majority of cases where overusing them only serves to throw data into disarray:
- They can differentiate various levels of collaboration, like "Rihanna feat. Jay-Z" or "Queen & David Bowie"
- They can differentiate releases by region, like distinguishing a Russian release by "Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович" from an English-language release by "Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich"
- They can capture significant and intentionally artistic variations in artist name on various albums, e.g. "John Mellencamp" vs. "John Cougar Mellancamp" vs. "John Cougar"...without opening the floodgates to arbitrary and random packaging differences like "Shostakovich" vs. "Dmitri Shostakovich" vs. "Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich" (his official Musicbrainz regional alias for the English language)...or worse, "jayz" vs. "Jayz" vs. "JAYZ" vs. "Jay Z" vs. "jay z" vs. "Jay-Z" vs. "Jay-z" vs. "Jay - Z" vs. Jay - z"...etc.

Do you see what I mean?  By overusing artist credits to capture trivial information from the packaging, editors are making them unusable for music playback clients altogether, even when the information they convey might be highly useful for other albums.  Internationalization does complicate this anyway, but if artists were credited by default with their official regional alias in the album's release region, artist credits could then usefully capture the essence of packaging information without without making themselves irrelevant/worthless by capturing TOO much pointless variation, as they currently seem to.  (Anyone wanting a consistent name for an artist across all release regions would pretty much have to turn off artist credits no matter what the rules were for applying them, but there are other cases where people might actually want to use artist credits...if they weren't so messy.)

The situation is a bit better in tagging clients, but not by a whole lot:  If you set your preferences in e.g. Picard to use standardized names (or regional aliases), it will use them for all albums, even the ones where artist credits would actually be useful.  You can control for this on a per-album basis by changing your preferences before importing each album, but this is pretty clunky.

Ideally, a tagging client like Picard would place switches for how to display artist names in the main window and reload album information whenever they're changed.  This would allow taggers to quickly control things on a per-album basis, thereby allowing people to use artist credits selectively while mitigating the damage they do to the metadata for most albums...but personally, I'd consider it smarter to impose stricter guidelines on how artist credits should be used to make them less of a mess in the first place.

9 Reply by Rovastar (edited by Rovastar 2012-09-14 20:13:02)

  • Registered: 2012-08-12

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

I enjoy discussions on improving MusicBrainz but I am not sure how you can really improve it for this .

Artist credits are an improvement over just the artist and as you say there is much justification for this and more besides.

I think 99.9+% of releases it works fine. There will always be the rare cases where it does not. (I am not usre Jay-Z vs ... is relevant as http://musicbrainz.org/artist/f82bcf78- … 800768d9ac says they all seem to be the same)

But what rules do you think should be in place for Musicbrainz for artists credits? Should we ignore the cover information? The rules will have to include when it is valid (e.g. a artist changing their name) as well as in your case invalid usage. For me it will be too subject to create concrete rules for this.

10 Reply by UnrealMiniMe (edited by UnrealMiniMe 2012-09-18 00:45:37)

  • Registered: 2012-08-31

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

Rovastar wrote:

I enjoy discussions on improving MusicBrainz but I am not sure how you can really improve it for this .

Artist credits are an improvement over just the artist and as you say there is much justification for this and more besides.

I think 99.9+% of releases it works fine. There will always be the rare cases where it does not. (I am not usre Jay-Z vs ... is relevant as http://musicbrainz.org/artist/f82bcf78- … 800768d9ac says they all seem to be the same)

But what rules do you think should be in place for Musicbrainz for artists credits? Should we ignore the cover information? The rules will have to include when it is valid (e.g. a artist changing their name) as well as in your case invalid usage. For me it will be too subject to create concrete rules for this.

The Jay-Z misspellings were an exaggerated example - even a poor example, as you noted - since his own artist credits are actually pretty consistent in the Musicbrainz database.  I suppose I was speaking more of a hypothetical problem than a real problem there, but I do think there's a difference between an artist using a significantly different name variation as a matter of personal expression (e.g. "John Mellencamp" / "John Cougar Mellancamp") and a publisher arbitrarily using a composer's last name only (e.g. "Shostakovich") after his death.

By default, I think a good rule would be to use the artist's official Musicbrainz regional alias for the release region "by default," unless the packaging for a particular release consistently uses a name variation different enough to signify a different intent by the actual artist being named.  In other words, "If you have a good reason, use the cover information.  If in doubt, use the artist's official regional alias for the album's release region."  I agree that such a rule would be subjective, but it should at least help avoid cases where editors like me would otherwise feel compelled to follow the box to the letter, even when it's clear that the formatting came from marketing people that the actual artist probably never met. ;)

reosarevok gave me an "out" in my particular case by suggesting "Dmitri Shosakovich," so clearly the packaging isn't everything in all cases.  However, arbitrarily choosing a name other than his official regional alias ("Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich") would still introduce variation without good reason.  Technically, I actually do prefer reosarevok's suggestion of "Dmitri Shostakovich" over using his middle name as well, but not so much that I think spurious variation is worth it...hence my preference for a "regional alias when in doubt" rule.

As a side note, when artists use entirely different performance names (e.g. Puff Daddy vs. P. Diddy), the documentation (if not official guidelines) seem to suggest that they should be treated as separate artists:  http://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_to_Use_Artist_Credits
The line definitely gets blurry here though, because if "John Mellencamp" vs. "John Cougar Mellancamp" is a good use case for artist credits, then why not "P. Diddy" vs. "Diddy" too?  Blah.

11 Reply by Rovastar (edited by Rovastar 2012-09-18 15:16:22)

  • Registered: 2012-08-12

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

I must admit I am no expert and only been doing this MB lark for a couple of months.

Maybe this helps/confuses the issue more.

http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Same_Artist_ … rent_Names

That gives some examples, including for middle names, artist preference, etc. So I am not sure any additional and more ambiguous and subjective rules will actually help. I think we have enough already for the rich and diverse (sometimes crazy) world of music.

Heaven only knows what the "correct" way (if one exists) for entering Prince's/symbol/artist formerly known as, etc [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_%28musician%29 ] releases. Surely the artist preference (which I thought always takes priority) is for the crazy love symbol (for which don't appear in a character set....) for some releases but logically the public (mostly) will just refer to all those releases as by Prince.

I suppose for Puff Daddy/P. Diddy it was classed as a separate musical project hence a separate artist created. I don't know enough about the background/music of this artist to make a proper judgement on this.


Personally for Shosakovich and related releases I would never have the Russian spelling "Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович" on any non-Russian releases - I am guessing that on non-Russian releases have it in English as some variation and looking at it most releases are non Russian releases. Most in the database seem to be the Russian releases I would have what is on the cover for the artist credits. It doesn't solve you problem with multiple versions/variations of the same English name.

(I did that for new releases for Susumu Yokota/横田進  http://musicbrainz.org/artist/7b05d6fe- … 3b1578716)

I think it is difficult and I am not sure we can ever get 100% correct and logical rules that we agree on.
As implied in the MusicBrainz link above try and use common sense, sadly common sense is not all that common.....

I must say I have only ever changed 1 entry like this in the MB database
The group Crazy P (previously know as Crazy Penis until about 2002)
http://musicbrainz.org/artist/45644225- … f9688e9a7d
And I used artists credits there and I presume that is the right thing to do.

12 Reply by UnrealMiniMe (edited by UnrealMiniMe 2012-09-18 15:04:04)

  • Registered: 2012-08-31

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

In terms of ambiguous and subjective rules, "When in doubt (if the packaging seems questionable), just use the artist's official regional alias" may be subjective, but all it really does is give the editor an "out" when being too deferential to the packaging would defy common sense.  It would definitely help in certain cases (such as where the packaging just says "Shostakovich"), and I can't see where it would really hurt.  Without any such rule, the implication is that you're not allowed to use common sense, and you must obey the packaging...which clearly doesn't work in all cases.

I'm new to this too, but reosarevok also seemed to recognize that something like "Shostakovich" (last name only) is problematic.  My point is that right now, there doesn't seem to be any rule that allows editors to ignore the packaging in this way, and I think there probably should be.  Personally, I'd consider the artist's regional alias for the release region to be a suitable fallback for cases like this (instead of replacing the name on the packaging with something arbitrary that's neither on the packaging nor an official alias).  As far as releases credited with "Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович" go, I imagine that most were entered before artist credits took effect - or before the editor learned about them - so the actual artist name was used by default.

As you noted, Prince is a whole can of worms all unto himself:  On top of difficulties writing his symbol, is "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" a separate performance artist or a different artist credit for the same artist (considering he didn't give up the name "Prince" by choice)?  Most aren't that bad though...I would agree you made the right move using artist credits for Crazy P, for instance.

  • Registered: 2012-08-12

Re: How to apply new release/track artist CSG's and artist credits?

I agree the releases "Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович" are likely before artists credits and the style of using the artist full name from country of origin. However fixing it is a lot of work there are a lot of references to this but I also find that if there is a consensus for an artist it is likely to be stuck to. So if you change *all* the references for Mr.  Shostakovich / Дмитрий Дмитриевич Шостакович to whatever you think is suitable and place notes for that artist it is likely that the others will follow. But from what I can see there is no correct answer here.

I think the MB link above does talk about common sense and this would be a case here but it just needs some precedent that doesn't exist for that artist/composers. (composers and classical music do have a whole set of their own rules)

I am still wading through the Crazy P releases on compilations to update them all to the correct artist credit so changing one artist is no easy task; and I would not relish doing the vast releases under Shostakovich.