[mb-style] RFC: New Artist Type: Project

[Lauri Watts]

On 7/5/06, Beth <imbethers at aim.com> wrote:
> Lauri, that is actually where I am coming from with some of my examples.
> What the artists call their project. Which was why I started to dig on the
> web after Cristov stated Alan Parson's Project. I figured artists knew what
> they were talking about, therefore why did it need to be defined.
>
> Of course, I don't know on NIN, that was put there specifically to try and
> get it out of the way, is it a project, is it a group, is it a person.

> As far as Autumn's Descent (used to be Ash's project, now the session
> musicians (that remained constant for the most part.) pressed it to be
> defined as group. They wanted more artistic say in what was created and
> released.) fine, I don't mind seeing that never defined as project. But,
> artist intent certainly claimed (and I believe the livejournal still is up
> where Ash mentions it shifted to group and away from his project.) For us to
> define it as group (previously) is going totally away from artist intent in
> my opinion. I don't know if Discogs has a way to represent project, nor do I
> know if anyone that has dug into the history or talked to the performers of
> artists I know that refer to what they do as their "project" have that type
> of input from those artists, or if it would change.

> Long or short of it is, we have the possibility to change things to
> represent that, If we can all decide on how to define project. I personally
> feel if the artist in charge (owner) of the project says it's a project, it
> should be listed as such, but, that isn't something we can define in wiki...
> it's not tangible. It's not something you can put a URL and say "here it is"
> at least, not if you've gotten that from conversations with the member
> themselves.

Ok, here's my thoughts,

A band is a group and has members (represented by Member AR's)
A project is a group, which may have members, and maybe has supporting
musicians for live shows (represented with supporting musicians AR's)
A collaboration is a group which has members (represented by collaboration AR's)

If we define a project as something that is creatively steered by one
(or more) stable people, and hires in musicians to tour or record as
necessary, well, that makes things like NiN a project.  That
definition pretty much makes any solo artist who ever tours a project
too :)

Really the only reliable source is, as you say, the artists
themselves. But we can't contact every artist ever, and the music
press is very slap happy about what they call a project or a band or a
collaboration.

And as usual I am rambling, but what I'm trying to get at is, the
truly useful information (that some people are permanently and deeply
involved, and others are rotating support, who is on which album or
tour and timeframes for those) can already be represented by AR's.

For what it's worth, I've already had a long and ultimately pointless
argument with someone in a mod whether something is a band or a
collaboration, while adding 'X is a member of..." AR's, by the way
(look at the mods for the members of Tribalistas.  The only reliable
source there was one of the members themselves _saying_ it was a band,
and even then the dissenting voter didn't want to back down.)  I can
only imagine how much fun this one will cause.

Please realise I am also partly playing devil's advocate here. I'm not
really dead set against this idea, I am just trying to grasp it
entirely.  So with that in mind: What's the point?  What does this
give us that we don't have now (other than another type of artist,
obviously :)

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
(ps: Before someone corrects me on that too, yes I know Excessive
Force put out a second album, I forgot. Only listened to it once about
10 years ago, and it was dire :)