Artist intent for capitalization of track listings and works

This has likely been asked before, but how would artist intent apply in the case where a band uses all-capitals for the title of an album and all songs in every official capacity?

The release in question is the latest blink-182 album, which they always refer to as ONE MORE TIME… (always all caps), and on all online streaming services the release and all tracks are in all-caps.

My opinion is that this is clearly the band’s intent since they’re very consistent with using all-caps, but an editor recently went and changed them all to English sentence-case, so before I try to change them back I thought I should check for the community’s opinion.

Release group: Release group “ONE MORE TIME…” by blink‐182 - MusicBrainz
Editing history: https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/520d6d45-19c8-4ee1-a954-180e7902f3da/edits
My comment on one of the edits with my opinion and sources: Edit #105369187 - MusicBrainz

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I think it’s artist intent also. It’s on every site and even their own website. Their are editors who have insisted on changing these on my edits in the past as well.

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Great, I’ll leave this thread up for a bit for more opinions before I try to edit back. I don’t want to get into an editing war where it keeps flip-flopping.

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I would also vote for artist intent. all the streaming sites I checked also use all-caps.

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It’s a bad idea to assume intent from artwork, but like you said:

  1. It’s in all caps in all official platforms;
  2. Other albums in the same platforms are not;
  3. This is a band already known for specific preferences when it comes to capitalization (blink-182 in lowercase)

So this seems a straightforward case of artist intent.

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I agree about the artwork actually, I’ve seen that plenty of times and shouldn’t have used that as a justification.

Thanks for the input, I’ve fixed the entries and at the same time corrected the title of track 1.

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I am not sure what I think about it but it is quite outstanding and sets a precedent for non-Japanese English tracklists.

I guess it’s the first time we are setting a full caps tracklist for a western release.

Back then, I haven’t set suede tracklists in full lowercase, as printed:thinking:

There are tons of US releases in all caps or all lowercase now. Been going on since the late 2010s. Not sure why all the artists are doing this now. It’s really quite boring, IMO. Especially popular in hip-hop & pop.

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Suede doesn’t seem to have been entirely consistent with titles/tracklists though. Dog Man Star, for instance, is all lowercase on the cover and the disc itself, but the title on the spine is DOG MAN STAR, and the back cover tracklist is in all caps. (I checked only the US and XE versions.) On A New Morning, the track titles are all lowercase on the back cover but in title case in the booklet/lyric sheet.

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It is all quite confusing. I put in a question \ edits with the sugarcubes first album earlier this year: https://musicbrainz.org/release/ade9b707-ec97-3ac3-a349-3acbdf4a0068 That is all clearly in lower case. Graphic Artist or Music Artist choice? Impossible to tell, so I kinda agree with the final consensus that MB is a musical database and shouldn’t be confused with somewhere for taggers to tag music.

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Yeah, this is what I mean, it’s generally better to not assume artist intent from artwork. Band members don’t usually sit around in a circle discussing their preferred capitalization. And you don’t want to change it when there is re-release or local release with different capitalization. MB isn’t a DB of artwork capitalization. But this is a case where it’s so consistent, there’s really no doubt in my mind it’s intentional.

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