[mb-style] "feat." in classical release titles

[Chris B]

2009/1/29 Frederic Da Vitoria <davitofrg at gmail.com>:
> 2009/1/29 Chris B <chris at whenironsattack.com>
>>
>> the reason we keep feat. in 'general' musicbrainz is because it's the
>> only way to represent as per the sleeve.
>>
>> we don't currently have a 'featuring' AR or flag (it has been
>> requested before but possibly never formally, and also would require
>> quite a bit of work IMO), and you need one because not every guest
>> lead guitar player (eg) is a featured artist :)
>>
>> presumably it's the same in classical. eg if yo-yo ma is a featured
>> cellist in an orchestra - in that he gets name checked on the cover.
>> as far as MBz would be concerned (if we only used ARs) he's still just
>> a "performs cello". how are you going to tell the tagger to put that
>> cello in the title, not all the others?
>>
>> this is why, in the absence of a featuring AR or featuring checkbox on
>> existing ARs, we need to keep the feat. style across all genres.
>
> This would be meaningful if we entered re-releases as separate MB Releases.
> When a classical recording is re-released (under the same brand or another),
> the sleeve is often completely redesigned even if the audio contents are
> completely undistinguishable. The orchestra could have been mentioned on the
> first release but not on the second, or in different words, or in a
> different form or... If you want to keep this level of detail, you'll have
> to enter these releases as separate MB Releases. Frankly, I won't
> participate in such a thing. I don't care if labels decide to change the
> colour of the cover, the only thing I care about is the audio contents. I
> don't even remember what many of my CDs look like, but I do remember what
> their music means to me.

isn't this all endemic to 'normal' releases as well? it definitely
happens in hip hop quite a bit, with someone featured one day, a liner
note the next. i've never really been in an edit war about it, but i
assume that it would be resolved by using whatever release closest to
the source (artist) does.

now, you don't really have that in classical music, but perhaps you
could just look at what the majority of versions do, or deferring to
the most popular?

i think it should be a matter for votes, really, rather than just
blanket not allowing feat. in classical. i mean, in the kind of
examples i'm thinking about i would have thought they were almost
always getting name checked on the cover. is there an example to hand
of some sort of world famous musician like yo-yo ma getting featured
on one release and then not on another (of the same recording)?

> Your attitude would have another drawback: the tagging function which MB
> users are so fond of is completely unable to handle such ambiguity. So when
> introducing an American 2008 edition of a release, Picard could very well
> pull a 1982 MB German Release. This is already true since we can enter
> separate MB Releases for different languages, but if we enter a MB Release
> for every significant cover variation, I believe tagging will become
> unmanageable for quite a few classical releases. Tagging is a minor aspect
> for me, but other users may not feel the same.

i would never suggest making multiple copies of the same recording for
different featuring configurations. i'm just saying that if there is a
clear case for it being on a given recording, i don't see that it
should necessarily be forbidden.