On 25/05/06, david scotson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
One basic fact is key to this and hopefully everyone can agree once
it's been pointed out:
* there is no basis or rationale for continuing to normalise track
titles to include (feat. X)
Go dig out your albums and you'll find that very few actually use that
format. They might say 'with' or 'duet with' or 'vocals by' or 'ft.'
You'll notice as well that as many times the feat or whatever appears
attached to the artist as it does to the song (particularly on VA
compilations and singles).
The only valid reason to do this was to allow a script to extract this
information at a later date and store it in the database. This has
already happened. I believe that script has actually been written and
run. We now have ARs, which not only allow you to store such info, it
lets you do so with incredibly fine grained detail. (An unvalid reason
might be to make your record collection titles 'neater')
ARs stores all information in the same place. ANY performing artist
who is not a normal member of the main artist is a 'guest'. There
absolutely needs to be a way of defining billed guest artists (ie,
those appended to the tracklist/cover of a release, not those in liner
notes/small print), outside of the usual producer/engineer/tea boy
ARs, and as such the best place for this is the title or artist field,
along side the relevent AR for that artist to give specific role info.
perhaps a solution would be to add a checkbox for all AR relationships
for 'featuring', such that it makes that AR 'special' which entails
that it is highlighted on the album page, and appended to the
track/artist title (ie as "(feat. x)" or perhaps even the full AR
string) when that file is tagged? hmm i really like that idea
actually!
We also have the changes brought in as a response to SG5 which allow
"X feat. Y" (or "X vs. Y" or "X meets the Ys uptown" or anything else)
to be the artist on the single, VA compilations or soundtracks as well
as the greatest hits albums of *both* collaborating artists without
the side effect of changing the single artist albums to be a VA album.
This also means track entries by crazy one-hit wonder dance artists
called "X feat. Y" no longer need to be mutilated to fit in with a now
redundant rule, that actually tried to solve a different problem in
the first place.
agree.
All the above means we have enough information stored in the database
now to take "track title" by "X vs. Y" appearing on X's greatest hits
album and transform it, at time of tagging, to "track title (feat. Y)"
by "X". Or even "track title (feat. A, B and C)". Not only that you
could use "ft." or anything else the user wanted to specify. Anyone
who wants their albums tagged like that can have it, it's just a
simple matter of programming.
So I would suggest alway putting the info in the artist field unless
it is incredibly minor ("trumpet solo by X", "featuring the St. Paul's
Choir") in which case just leave it as it is written on the cover and
mark it with an appropriate AR.
IMO anything deemed worthy by the cover, is worthy to go into the
title/artist. i find a lot of people adding (feat. x) and collabs on
stuff that was never billed as such, just because they are interested
in the x in question. there is a difference between someone appearing
on a track, and being *featured* on a track.
With reference to Aretha and Eurythmics, if it is really felt that the
contribution of Aretha to this song is not enough for her to be
awarded the full MusicBrainz ampersand then "Eurythmics with Aretha
Franklin" seems just as good a name for a collaboration to me.
my position is still that it can be a different setup depending on the
context :) i don't think we should be unifying the track titles/artist
names for the same track, because it serves no real purpose. people
with the single would want it tagged as X & Y, people with X's album
would want it X (feat. Y), and Y's album Y (feat. X). generally i
think if we stick with the cover the most relevent title will be
shown.
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