[mb-style] RFC: Works lists (and other related changes then implied)

[Brian Schweitzer]

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Sami Sundell <sami.sundell at kotikone.fi> wrote:
> Brian Schweitzer wrote:
>
>  Since it was suggested I should read this discussion, I'm going through
>  it slowly :P
>
>
>  > I guess it depends on how we define "work".  Is a "work" a unique
>  > composition?  If so, then there ought to not be, imho, a listing also
>  > in the covering artist's workslist.  Or is a "work" simply an
>  > indication that an artist has played a song?  Then it would appear in
>  > that covering artist's workslist.
>  >
>  > Personally, I think the first is the cleaner - and better - solution.
>
>  I disagree. I don't think "work" is just a composition, it contains
>  other parts as well. I work regularly with a specific kind of covers -
>  translations of foreign hits. They clearly cover some original work, but
>  they also have a portion of their own work in them - at least the
>  lyrics. These covers may then be covered again by some other artist.
>
>  So, for example, Bobby Goldsboro recorded Bobby Russell's song "Honey"
>  <http://musicbrainz.org/track/34eac06e-9f0d-473b-9f94-d015706dd19a.html>.
>  It was, in turn, covered by Markku Suominen in 1968
>  <http://musicbrainz.org/track/6982f79d-ec7b-4851-ae9a-b729713e4116.html>
>  and that one was covered by Raffe Leppänen in 2003
>  <http://musicbrainz.org/track/f298ca18-75b5-44f9-8e91-f803d9a6c2ab.html>.
>
>  More complicated examples exist, with your choice of parodies etc. in
>  between, but this one's a simple. Raffe didn't cover the original Bobby
>  Russell song, the song's better known in Finland by its Finnish name and
>  lyrics.
>
>  So, we'll need the "work-based" ARs on covers as well, and the covers
>  may in turn be covered, so some of those ARs should be allowed between
>  worklists as well as between tracks.

Well, again, I think this is exactly what we pointed out we would want
to preserve - noone said never to add a work in, when there is some
modification (and I believe I even specified translated lyrics as one
of the two examples there, actually), only that there's no reason to
enter a work simply because it's covered by a band.

In your example - and not, I don't know the songs, so I'm just going
off what you said:

Bobby Goldsboro recorded Bobby Russell's song.  Ok, so Bobby Russell
would have a work (I assume he also recorded it, not just wrote it).
Then Bobby Goldsboro would have a link from a track to that work, but
the work under Bobby Russell, not a new work listing.

Markku Suominen in 1968 - ok, now you have a modification to the work,
creating a new work via a modification to the original.  So now a new
work listing is added to Markku Suominen, and an AR linking the Markku
Suominen work back to the Bobby Russell song via the "earlier version
of" AR is set between the two works.  The Markku Suominen tracks then
link to the Markku Suominen work.

...that one was covered by Raffe Leppänen in 2003- ok, again, like
Bobby Goldsboro, you have an unmodified cover, so here again, no new
work, this would link back to the Markku Suominen work.

So the "chain of covers", as it was earlier described by someone in
here, is preserved, but we don't have the situation where simply doing
a 30 second cover on a bootleg is enough that suddenly that "work" now
ends up in that group's works list (which would confuse "work" with
"songs they've performed", making the "works list" not really a list
of works).

Brian