[mb-style] Use of recording comment

[Simon Austin]

On 06/07/11 23:24, Johannes Weißl wrote:
> Hello Philip,
>
> On Wed, Jul 06, 2011 at 11:40:32PM +0200, Philip Jägenstedt wrote:
>> http://musicbrainz.org/edit/14779672
>>
>> Right after NGS went live went live I made a few edits like this
>> myself, but soon stopped because it seems to be destroying information
>> for tagging. In the case where you have multiple recordings of the
>> same song that were never decorated with "(new version)" or similar on
>> the cover, we're going to have to make something up as a
>> disambiguation comment. In such a case, I certainly would not want to
>> see that comment in my "normalized" tag.
> I also think the comment should be used mainly for disambiguation, like
> the artist comment, for recordings that *already* have the same name.
>
> I propose the following guideline for the recording name:
> "Been It (album version)" --> "Been It"
> is OK, since if this recording gets merged into the recording of the
> album, it would need a generic name anyway.
>
> I don't think it is OK to do this for the recording name:
> "Been It (Tee's Freeze mix)" --> "Been It"    (comment: "Tee's Freeze mix")
> The recording is probably very different from the album version, it
> should have a different name.
>
> The mix can be linked to the song (= work), which has a generic title,
> or to the recording itself (via the "remix of" AR).
>
> This is how I handled this issue in the past, would be great to hear how
> others think...
>
I would tend to agree. "album version" would seem to be superfluous in
most cases, and should only really appear in tracklists where the song
has been marked like that on the release. Named mixes/versions go in the
recording title and things like live dates/locations seem ideal for the
recording comment field.

I suppose there's a grey area with generically titled versions like
"edit" or "extended mix".

- Si