On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Cadalach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Suppose I buy a classical CD and track one appears as > > Piano Concerto in D, Op. 1: I. Andante > > but then I find on MB that it's listed as > > Concerto for Piano in D major, Op. 1: I. Andante cantabile > > then don't I have a right to be surprised and perhaps even a little > unhappy? All this business with "master lists" and so on will create a > database that's more disparate from reality than I think is sensible. > Yes, a _little_ standardisation can be useful, but I feel that at the > moment there's far too much of a push towards making things more > fantastical than they have a right to be. Users should be able to get > information about what actually exists rather than what some of us > think the record labels ought to have done. > > So, rather than worrying about, for example, "Should we write X or Y?" > do we have it clear why we want to be so strict that we can't live > with both X and Y in the database? and why having so many > track/release titles that aren't the ones in the booklet or on the > cover is such a good thing?
The problem is that classical releases are often re-released. The same recordings (you will get the same PUIDs and so on). But the sleeves will change. So let's say that the first user who entered an old version of the release read " Concerto for Piano in D major, Op. 1: I. Andante cantabile" on the sleeve. So he entered this. So far everybody is happy. A few years later, you buy a budget re-release and you submit it to Picard and... Well what happens next depends on you. If you know classical, you will think that what MB have is a good enough approximation of what is printed and you will be happy with it. If you know classical a little more, you will even think: "wow, MB outsmarted the editor of my release!" But if you don't know much about classical and if CSG did not use such rules, you would maybe try to "correct" the existing MB release :-( You must not forget that in classical, the title is not fixed, the track titles are not fixed, even the performers are not fixed (some releases may omit a performer). I am sure some particular poor releases even do mistakes in composers! Since the current MB structure does not allow to set more than one title for a release or a title, we must find a rule. We could have decided that the first historical release would define the titles for example. We did not (I don't think it would have been an idea easy to implement). MB users before me decided instead we would formalize the track titles in a unique rational way. Although I agree very much with this principle, it does have a major issue: classical music is definitely not rationalizable! -- Frederic Da Vitoria
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