@fmera I entered Oklahoma! (1943 original Broadway cast album 75th anniversary). I tried to follow the Style Guide for musical theatre. Checking whether I should just use the special purpose artist of [theatre] with artist credit, I found this: [theatre]. Author @fmera says “Unless those ensembles are the only credits, or are the first in sequence to be named in the credits followed by others, you may include such ‘credits’ with just intermediate or trailing phrases, without resorting to using this SPA. eg: see this tracklist.” The tracklist that @fmera linked to is the tracklist of Oklahoma! including the Lee Dixon “and Male Chorus” that I was following when I entered the edits! Some guidance from @fmera would be nice. I wasn’t sure how to give credit to Chorus. Please see this edit discussion.
(Edited entry on 2018/09/19 to clean up hyperlinks. - Marnie, aka @cricketco)
thks for the prompt 
to add to that, i’ll try to explain the reasoning from my point of view, since the present theatre guidelines don’t actually say what’s the best practice in cases like these.
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since all SPAs are merely placeholders and don’t really point to any particular known artist whether you tag such credits to an SPA or not, i reckon that if you don’t need to resort to SPAs to set a credit for any recording (or other entity), then it’s probably better to just dispense with their use, and that’s because…
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if you assign a credit like “Chorus” to [theatre], it only gets aggregated to the long list of artist credits already associated with that SPA. beyond that, it goes no further to ascertain who are that group.
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another alternative, which some might have considered, is to piggyback such credits onto one or more preceding known artists in those particular recordings, let’s say crediting Alfred Drake as “Alfred Drake and Chorus”. but this approach has one drawback; it adds an inappropriate artist credit to Alfred Drake’s list of aliases, since that’s a name you’d not likely imagine Drake himself to have ever used, or that it was an artist group of which he was a member. it’s just an ad hoc ensemble.
so, if the conditions allow it, i feel we can dispense with tagging these credits to any SPAs, and only resort to them when we have to.
I still don’t like when artists (in this case chorus, male chorus, etc.) are used as a join phrase. Join phrase joins two artists together and should not serve as a placeholder for another artist.
I’m tagging @paulakreuzer to join this thread becase they raised the discrepancy in my edit. I’m also tagging @reosarevok to join this thread because I think both @fmera and @reosarevok have given me guidance on artist credit before, especially regarding track artist credit and recording artist credit. I’m still confused about them.
Regarding:
I’m not sure what you mean. Which of the following alternatives are you suggesting?
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Create a new artist group for the chorus and include the group in the recording artist credits along with the lead performer(s). That would be my preference, but the musical theatre style guide says, “The intent of this guideline is to avoid the creation of “Cast of (some show)” artists whenever possible.” Is the goal really to avoid creating a chorus group? Why? Perhaps it’s really a matter of grammatical phrasing and it would be more accurate to say, “The intent of this guideline is to promote the identification of performing artists by name whenever possible.”
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Identify only the lead performer(s) in the recording artist credits. If so, I disagree because that would indicate inaccurately that the actor performed a solo and would be inconsistent with the credit in the CD booklet for Oklahoma!. The tracklist on page 15 identifies performing artists and chorus (in various iterations). It lists the members of the chorus separately on page 3. The musical theatre style guide says that the recording artist credit should be to the performer.
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Use a joining phrase in the recording artist credits such as “and chorus” like on the recording by “Lee Dixon and Male Chorus” for the song Kansas City. If so, I disagree because the chorus members are individuals who should be acknowledged for their performance, if possible. However, I see that several of Alfred Drake’s recordings use that approach. I suspect its use had more to do with the lack of readily available information on the release about the performers.
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Use a credited as phrase such as “Alfred Drake and Chorus” in the recording artist credits like on several of Alfred Drake’s recordings. If so, I agree with your objection:
In my edit discussion, @fmera said the recording artist credit should be consistent with how the majority of the soundtrack releases credited this particular track. Unfortunately, they all link to the same recording–the one that gives credit only to Alfred Drake. I am now realizing that if I change the recording artist credit on my release, it would change the credit on all those other releases, right? So now what? My release uses the same recording, but my release gives credit to the chorus and identifies the members by name. What are we supposed to do when the historic credit was incomplete? Is that an example of why there is a difference between track artist credit and recording artist credit?
New example: I struggled with how to credit the performing artists for:
The tracklist on page 4 of the Fiddler on the Roof CD booklet credits the characters’ names including "Villagers". Because we’ve got the data from page 3 of the CD booklet identifying the artists who perform the characters, I essentially followed @fmera’s suggestion:
I really like how I have credited the performing artists on the release. See for example, the song called Sabbath Prayer: I gave track artist credit and recording artist credit to Danny Burstein, Jessica Hecht and Villagers. Then I entered the following relationships:
| recording of: | Sabbath Prayer (Fiddler on the Roof) |
|---|---|
| choir vocals [Villagers]: | 2016 Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof |
| conductor: | Ted Sperling |
| lead vocals [Golde]: | Jessica Hecht (American stage and screen actor and singer) |
| lead vocals [Tevye]: | Danny Burstein (American stage and screen actor) |
| orchestra: | orchestra (Fiddler on the Roof) |
See how I’ve added the character’s name in the type of vocal performance following "choir vocals" or "lead vocals"?! That acknowledges the credited as data from the release’s tracklist without confusing the appearance of the performing artist’s name in the track and recording artist credits.
Summary: I think I should give recording artist credit to only “Alfred Drake”. But, I should give track artist credit to “Alfred Drake” and a newly-created artist group (such as, “1943 Broadway chorus of Oklahoma!”, whose members would be the performers listed on page 3). Agree or disagree?
On the other hand . . . YIKES! What have I gotten into?
Comparing track and recording artist credits on:
and:
Or:
and
makes me think I probably did it incorrectly on:
Please advise!
Since you asked me: Personally I’d create a new group with those members (probably as collaborators) and add it to the artist credits, but I’m not familiar with theater so I’m not really the right person to ask here.