[mb-style] NGS RFC: spurious works (& the Artist field)

[Brian Schweitzer]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 11:14 PM, Leiv Hellebo <leiv.hellebo at gmail.com>wrote:

> autodave at davesmey.com wrote:
> > So in general I'm with Philip and Frederic and whoever else is
> > uncomfortable with an "artist" slot being filled with the composer.
>
> ...
>
>  > BTW, reading the explanation of the Artist Credit gives me a lot of
>  > hope.
>
> Me too.
>
> Now if ACs make collaborations more palatable, perhaps we should start
> crediting the performers (as credited on the release in question) in
> stead of the composer for classical?
>
> Pros:
>
> - get rid of FeaturingArtistStyle for classical release titles
> - get rid of a major difference in how we treat classical different than
>   other stuff.
> - get in line with how record companies/download sites use artists
>   This may be a big win in the long run for MB, I think - for classical
>   anyway.
>
> Cons:
> - will require a whole lot of move-release edits for the handful of big
> composers
> - we might have to create a FeaturingComposerStyle in stead :p
>   record companies/download sites almost always add the composer to the
>   release title or the track titles in stead to enable browsing of
>   collections based on composer:
>   Following Luks's example in another thread, we're not saying
>   the 7th symphony by Beethoven,
> - we'll require mb users to treat their music collections differently
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
I wouldn't want to see it.  It'd fragment classical (and opera, musical
theater, production music, etc) to bits.  My understanding is that works and
work ARs won't be 'autoinherited' by Recordings in the ws data, so data
clients, Picard, etc, wouldn't get the composer info at all (at least
without multiple additional requests).  It also assumes that every Recording
*has* a performer, which isn't the case for a lot of production music, or
that the performer is known, which isn't the case for almost any production
music, as well as a good bit of musical theater (other than generic
'performing company' level performer data).

If we ever looked at doing something like that, I'd much rather see us
abolish the "artist" concept entirely, rather than simply reassign all
composer as artist to performer as artist; let me assign who the 'artist' is
- maybe I want to view by lyricist, librettist, composer, performer, etc.
Just use the ARs.  Of course, that would only really work if we got a huge
increase in ARs, considering that such a slim percentage of the database has
any ARs at all.

Brian
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-style/attachments/20100407/a3196c97/attachment.htm