On 6/9/2011 10:57 PM, monxton wrote: > Now I know nothing about metal, but I don't see why you say a short term > collaboration between Motorhead and Girlschool would not be a good > example of a collaboration.
I wouldn't; it absolutely *is* a collaboration. I'm not talking about collaboration relationships here, and maybe that's the root of our disagreement. I'm talking about situations where it is appropriate to use artist credits instead of creating separate artists, and Headgirl is not such a situation. >> * The group is known by a different name when performing together. (how >> different? is “First& First” sufficiently different? How about “First >> & First Last”? What about nicknames?) >> * The necessity of an AR to the group. >> * Some kind of notability requirement? (Wikipedia? Official home page >> under the group name? both are really AR requirements, but maybe some >> other notability requirement like google search suggestions??) > > Yes, those three are all useful criteria, but you have omitted the > criterion which is actually cited in the definition at the top of your > post, that is, durability. This is the very essence of the distinction, > you can't just ignore it. It's a criterion for collaborations, but as we see with Headgirl, not all collaborations are given multi-artist credits, and it seems to me that the converse is also true: not all multi-artist credits must be collaborations. > I agree this is a possible measure of notability - my reservation is > that many "folk" bands get very little attention in MBz compared to > rock/pop, specially former bands which were defunct before the CD was > introduced, and because nobody has given their ARs a going over doesn't > mean they are not notable. Yours is very much a Wikipedian argument. I think it's a very straightforward, clear way to decide: If there is a need for a standalone artist, make it a standalone artist. If there's not and it's possible, use artist credits. That sounds a lot less subjective than your example of: > if the group's recordings > comprise only a few tracks on a compilation, they are definitely a > collaboration. If they have released at least two studio albums over > time then they are/were definitely a band. Between lies a grey area... That is just as much a notability requirement as mine, and a lot harder to decide, especially without being intimately familiar with the group in question. If you're curious, I added "number of albums" to the spreadsheet: Only three or four artists have fewer than two albums: meatgirl (0 albums!); beck, bogert and appice (1 album); Ashley Hutchings et al. (maybe); and Norma and Lal Waterson (1 album). > Well, Waterson:Carthy has always had four members AFAIK, the fourth > having equal billing but not named either Waterson or Carthy. Wikipedia says it was initially Norma Waterson and Martin and Eliza Carthy. It's academic to our discussion though. > Of the others outside your green area Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch is > clearly a collaboration, and was probably just entered wrong in the > first place. I believe it was missing collaboration relations. Doesn't matter, that's a migration problem and not relevant to its current status of "auto-edited out of the database". > Similarly Ashley Hutchings-and-all-those-other-names > probably just blew the mind of the migration tool, Nah, it was just in MB as "Ashley Hutchings & Friends" and with one collaboration relations, so the converter didn't do anything with it. > but that is also just > a collaboration. Really? There are five albums (Morris On, Son of Morris On, Grandson of Morris On, Great Grandson of Morris On, and Morris On the Road), spanning 30 years, though the lineup varies somewhat and the latter three are credited as "various artists". That's firmly on your "definitely a band" side. My purpose, though, isn't to go through a list and decide whether or not each group on the list is or is not a collaboration. It's not to decide whether a given artist is worthy of being considered a band or is somehow not a "real" band. It's not to destroy all recognition of folk bands, or of bands whose names happen to be lists of their members, or of bands that stopped existing before 1982. My purpose is to find a good, preferably objective, set of guidelines for whether a group (collaboration or not) should be entered as a standalone musicbrainz-artist, or as a set of artist credits. And to measure those guidelines to see how well they work. _______________________________________________ MusicBrainz-style mailing list MusicBrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
