Gecks:

I'll take you up on this digression.  I think it's a general MB issue, not
just part of cleaning up the CSG.


Gecks wrote:
> 
> On 04/02/2008, Jim DeLaHunt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I think this this is an independent issue. I'm relatively new here, but
>> my
>> understanding is that the (Orchestra feat. conductor: X, piano: Y)
>> notation
>> arose out of time when there was no AR capability in the database, the
>> taggers were less good at moving data from the database into tags, and
>> many
>> players couldn't read tags and used only what were in the ReleaseArtist,
>> ReleaseTitle, and TrackTitle fields.  All three limitations have eased. I
>> don't see that changing ReleaseArtist is a precondition for removing this
>> notation.
> 
> somewhat off topic, but that's not necessarily the case. an artist
> being 'featured' means they are name checked on the track listing or
> cover of a release (that is, elevated above normal liner credits). ...
> 

I just reread http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/FeaturingArtistStyle and
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/HistoryOfFeaturingArtistStyle. I don't see the
term "name checked", or being "elevated above normal liner credits" in those
pages. 

What the FeaturingArtistStyle says is, 
"This guideline applies to cases in which one or more artists collaborate on
a track or release.... If one artist can be considered the primary artist,
[set Release/Track artist to primary artist, add (feat. Secondary Artist),
use ARs]. If no artist can be considered secondary, [set Release/Track
artist to new collaboration artist Artist1 & Artist2, use ARs]."

FeaturingArtistStyle isn't explicit about what problem it's trying to solve,
but reading between the lines I think the use case is: user wants list of
works by Artist A, looks at MB.org web UI's lists of releases/tracks for
which A is Release/TrackArtist, expects to find collaborative track/release. 
That is, the end goal is to get a complete list of works involving A in the
MB.org web UI.

FeaturingArtistStyle doesn't say why the "(feat. Secondary Artist)" gets
added to the Release/Track title. HistoryOfFeaturingArtistStyle has a vague
allusion, which is that it's a way to search for works where an Artist B is
a major but secondary collaborator, by searching for Artist B's name in the
Release/TrackTitle. There's some more vague allusions in
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/GettingRidOfFeaturingArtistStyle .

If the MB.org web UI could give a listing of all releases/tracks for which
artist A is either Release/TrackArtist or linked by a relevant
PerformanceRelationshipClass AR, then it seems to me that both of these
problems could be addressed.


Gecks wrote:
> 
> we still record this in track/release titles as we always have done, and
> rightly so since the fact that they have been 'featured' cannot be stored
> in ARs.
> 

I don't understand why the fact of name-checking "cannot" be stored in ARs.
All it takes is agreeing to create an Artist-Release AR "Artist is
name-checked on the physical release cover of Release", with appropriate
definitions for "name-checked" and "physical release cover".  If the problem
we are trying to solve is recording who is name-checked on a CD jewel-case
cover, then the AR seems a more descriptive way to store the data than text
in a TrackTitle.


Gecks wrote:
> 
> classical releases tend to have a lot of featured artists, so role
> information was stored in the brackets, which has no doubt led to
> overloaded titles. IMO that info could probably be gotten rid but it would
> seem a bad idea to drop featured artists from classical release/track
> titles entirely.
> 

http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/ClassicalReleaseTitleStyle says the bit in
parentheses follows FeaturingArtistStyle (at one point) and
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/ExtraTitleInformationStyle (at another point). 
It gives examples which differ from both of these.  It doesn't say *why* the
examples differ from FeaturingArtistStyle and ExtraTitleInformationStyle, or
what problems ClassicalReleaseTitleStyle is trying to solve. 

I wasn't around when those decisions were made.  If I were to speculate as
to the reasons why, I wouldn't say "classical releases tend to have a lot of
featured artists". That's a bit circular, if you're trying to define a
FeaturedArtistStyle.  I'd say that classical performances are characterised
by four or more roles (composer, conductor, orchestra, soloist #1, perhaps
other soloists) not just two, and that the relative importance of those
roles differs from case to case.  That number of artists makes it clumsy to
apply FeaturingArtistStyle directly, and the differing importance would lead
to inconsistent results if there was no convention. But that's my
speculation, it isn't written in ClassicalReleaseTitleStyle. 

BTW there's a mention of media player limitations to the "CoreEntities
Artist-Release-Track" in GettingRidOfFeaturingArtistStyle. And in
http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=8113032 and
http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=8113030, which revolved around me
adding "(feat. orchestra San José Chamber Orchestra)" to TrackTitle "Piano
Concerto" <http://musicbrainz.org/show/track/?trackid=7513080>. 

So, I stand by my belief that we could remove the FeaturingArtist notation
for classical releases without having to change the
ClassicalReleaseArtistStyle rules. I do think it would be helpful to improve
the MB.org web UI so that it gives a listing of all releases/tracks for
which artist A is either Release/TrackArtist or linked by a relevant
PerformanceRelationshipClass AR.


-----
     -- http://jdlh.com/ Jim DeLaHunt , Vancouver, Canada  • 
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/JimDeLaHunt

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