Hi, I’m trying to add a release to this group and I see it is listed as Soundtrack as a secondary type. This single includes only the opening and ending songs (and video in the release i’m adding) so I don’t know if it qualifies as a soundtrack per se, I’m reading the documentation but it’s obviously geared towards films.
I’ve been adding a lot of op/ed singles and never listed them as Soundtracks, because there usually is a separate release that includes the short version plus the actual soundtrack. In the case of Suite Precure, it would be this release.
Bottom line. Should I edit out the Soundtrack secondary type in this kind of releases?
I know MusicBrainz likes to roll with its own terminology, but per Wikipedia,
Songs such as pop songs and rock songs are usually not considered part of the film’s score, although songs do also form part of the film’s soundtrack.
As an aside, I don’t see how it’s beneficial to shuffle these singles so that they are no longer in chronological order, and I’d be skeptical anyone would want that.
I would keep the soundtrack sub type of the single was not released separately from the films.
See how the Titanic single prominently shows that it comes from the film or was recorded for the film.
I don’t think we lose anything by marking singles from soundtrack albums, pop or otherwise, as having a secondary ‘soundtrack’ type. And we gain the ability to find all singles that were made for, or first released on, soundtracks, if that’s what we specify. Though I also think that movies or shows can be scored with any kind of music… Is this a controversial opinion?
I also think it would be more intuitive for users and editors than the reverse, since generally singles from soundtracks clearly advertise that they’re from soundtracks on the packaging.
When less than 25% of a release is a “soundtrack”, and 0% of a release is a “score” - why? That’s a direct violation of the Style Guidelines if I’ve ever seen one.
Any secondary types should apply to most of the tracks on the releases within the release group.
Also contradicts the stance of the current Style Leader, dated 7 years ago:
this RG is not a soundtrack to anything nor intended as such.
I really don’t think whether something is a “score” or not (however one defines it) should be relevant here, since any kind of music can constitute a soundtrack.
Regarding the 25%… and assuming you’re talking about a single that has 4 tracks on it, one of which is the actual recording from the soundtrack album and the others (presumably) variations on it or related tracks… then I’d say it would have as much grounds to be called a “soundtrack” single as it would have grounds to be called a single at all—since it is, strictly speaking, more than one song, yet we still consider it a Single, since that’s one of the kinds of release we’ve decided can constitute a Single.
Likewise, we can have the guidelines say that if it says it’s from a soundtrack, or was first released on a soundtrack, then also mark it as ‘soundtrack’.
Just to be clear, I don’t really mind which direction this goes, I just think one is more intuitive and potentially more useful than the other. I even went through a short period of removing Soundtrack types from Single release groups myself:
Three years ago, when reading the guidelines, I inferred (largely from the Work style page and a forum post by Reosarevok) that Singles weren’t generally to be considered soundtracks. Thinking this could be made more explicit, so editors don’t have to go to the trouble of cross-referencing various pages and coming to their own conclusions in the future, I thought I’d try and improve the documentation with this wiki edit to the ReleaseGroup/Type page. It was eventually reverted by Reosarevok in this edit, with the following explanation:
“The conversation mentioned for this change is about works. For RGs this is not really the case – I’d expect a single clearly marked to be from a movie soundtrack to be listed as such.”