Forgive me for beating a 2-years-dead horse, but I have not yet given my
thoughts on the issue. I believe that if there was any consensus in the
discussions I have been catching up on, it is all voices are welcome. To
begin:
I believe that unique tracks should have unique track names across all
releases. This seems to be essential for distinguishability of tracks by
their track names, effectively describing any differences in sound (ie
unique tracks) with unique, specific track name information. (Note I am not
using the term TrackName; by "track name" I mean everything after the artist
name.) I also believe the converse: that unique track names should be paired
with unique tracks across all releases. There should be no doubt as to what
sound (unique track) one is referring to given a track name. To summarize:
every unique track should be paired with one and only one unique track name.
Each name has one sound and each sound has one name.
Therefore, it follows that if a physical release lists "Funky Shit (album
version)" in its tracklisting, and this recording is the exact same as
"Funky Shit" on the actual album that "album version" is referring to, or
whatever is chosen to be the default or main version, (that is, if tracks
labelled as "Funky Shit (original mix)" and "Funky Shit (album version)" are
non-unique, identical sounds), then their names should be somehow merged
conform to the above one-to-one rule (ie, they should both be labelled
"Funky Shit"; this is one pair.)
Similarly, if two physical releases both list "Funky Shit" names but they
actually contain unique sounds, then these unique sounds should be given
unique names, overidding the tracklisting just as we would for a spelling
mistake. If one "Funky Shit" comes from a single release and the other from
a full album, then the first should be called "Funky Shit (single edit)" (or
something similar), assuming we have chosen the sound from the album to be
worthy of the default, base name (no extra parentheticals) as we normally
do. (Or, if the single contains the default sound, then its tracklisting
should say "Funky Shit," and the album's listing should say "Funky Shit
(album version)"
Therefore, I address all who favor full inclusion (or full removal) of
"album version" and similar ExtraTitleInformation by responding to a list of
arguments from an earlier discussion:
"we loose version information when it's removed" -- If the track is not
actually a version of the default (ie if we do not actaully have two unique
sounds), then it should not be labelled as such.
"in line with 'state what is on the cover'" -- Everyone seems to agree that
covers are sometimes wrong. There are misspellings and mislabellings.
"when [album version is] removed, a release can have two tracks with the
same name, making the track listing ambiguous" -- Then fix the mistaken
listing. Either call one of the "(single edit)" or the other "(album
version)".
"The album version isn't necessarily the main version, and the album version
may not be called an album version but instead LP version, 12" version, etc.
and in both cases the version info is kept." -- If we match all sounds to
unique names, then it doesn't matter how a track is incorrectly labelled (LP
version, 12" version, album version, or even original mix), if it shares the
same sound as the default-ly named sound, then it should be given the
default name.
"There's currently an inconsistency in assumptions we make, i.e. an
unlabelled track on a live release is a live version, but an unlabelled
track on a single release is an album version" -- From all of the above, it
follows that "unlabelled tracks" (what I interpet to mean default-ly named
tracks, to be consistent with terminology I used earlier) on live releases
(assuming they differ in sound from the default-ly named tracks) should be
labelled (live), and unlabelled (again, default-ly named) tracks on single
releases should be labelled (single edit) if they differ in sound from the
true default; otherwise, if the unlabelled tracks do not differ from their
true default versions, then they should retain their default names.
I left out the middle one, as I think it's the best, and it drives to a
deeper issue:
"SameTrackRelationshipType is the AR that can state that two tracks have the
same content; no need to rename them all to the same name" -- I wrote my
first paragraph really from the "tagging" purpose/perspective, assuming that
all tracks should be uniquely identified by fields available in ID3, and
vice versa, not from otherwise invisible musicbrainz-specific meta-data.
That is, hopefully all musicbrainz data that actually identifies a track as
unique could be contained in text as ExtraTitleInformation. If two tracks
are identical and share SameTrackRelationshipType, then their ID3 track
title field (and total musicbrainz name) should be the same. If two tracks
have been identified as non-unique with RemasterRelastionshipType, then one
of the tracks shoul
