[mb-style] RFC-327: Featured Artists

[Lauri Watts]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Ryan Torchia <anarchyriot at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 2011/7/16 Nicolás Tamargo de Eguren <reosarevok at gmail.com>
>>
>> > That still a common scenario, and the position that the featured artist
>> > might not deserve equal credit is absolutely correct in many cases.
>>
>> One would think that if they thought they didn't deserve any special
>> credit, they wouldn't have put them into the feat. slot though, just
>> in the liner credits.

> Or perhaps one would think featuring a well-known name would increase record
> sales, regardless of the extent of actual participation.  Or they were just
> looking for a way to thank somebody not in the band for guesting on a track.

In mainstream, major label western music, there are contractual
requirements involved
here, to put it simply.

A "Featured" artist is entitled to a different share of the licensing
revenue split
than other artists are, and it's a very different (and much smaller) amount
than a duet credit. How much input they have into the actual recording
comes far behind how favourable the terms negotiated by their label were.

There is not a one-to-one correlation between who is legally called a
"featured" artist
and those who are listed with the specific word "Featuring", but it's damn near.

This is very often the sole difference between a duet or collaboration
and a featured
appearance. It goes the other way too, I can think of collaborations
where one or
more of the artists made substantial contribution but are not
specifically "featured",
either as a favour to the primary artist, or because their own label
expressly forbade
it over marketing/branding concerns. Those people are listed only deep
in the liner
notes, and probably were paid only the studio session cut and no royalties.

>> "Whoever presents Whoever2" is quite less
>> "equal" and still gets an artist credit if I'm not mistaken.
>
> Can you give some examples?  The only Artist Presents Artist release I could
> think of off the top of my head was Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5; Diana
> Ross (rightfully) doesn't have an artist credit for that album.  A quick
> search didn't turn up any examples of presenter getting a track credit; most
> presenters were labels or sponsors anyway.

We removed very many of them. It is exceedingly common in the
electronic/dance world.

DJ Foo presents Bar, Baz presenting DJ Foo and the Buzzballs, etc ad
infinitum. Those
are almost invariably a case of "Famous DJ giving a boost to Lesser
Known Act", and the lesser
known act goes on to release the rest of their music under their own
name, very often including
reissues of the original single. It's also a common way for projects
to present side projects
of one or more of their members: "Foo Group presents Side Project
consisting of one member of Foo".
Again, once they've got some engagement, they tend to drop the prefix
and release the rest
of their catalogue as just the "Side Project" name.

The result is, the first single often shows up on a compilation
(Ministry of House is full of these,
for instance), has one artist credit, with a presents. Once they have
traction, they drop the "pres."
often by the time that same single actually gets released on it's own.
Under the previous database
schema, these were invariably merged away into the standalone artist
name, since they are in fact
the exact same artist.

-- 
Laurie Watts