Can we add fan-made bootlegs that only have releases on YouTube or in video game mods?

I was wondering if fan-made bootlegs/edits/remixes were out of scope for MusicBrainz or not. Here is one such release I am talking about:

If it’s allowed, would it be added under the artist “the_kovic” or would it go under Mick Gordon and labeled as bootleg?

Here is another example: Quake Champions: Doom Edition - Original Soundtrack (v2.5) - YouTube

This soundtrack has a mod that works in game, with higher quality music downloads available here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-champions-doom-edition/downloads/qcde-soundtrack-in-game

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I’m far from an expert on this, but for the Doom Eternal case, it seems like it might hinge on how transformative the version on YouTube is, i.e. whether it’s just a reordering of the tracks from the official release or something more.

This is from the video’s description:

This is a pet project of mine. I was annoyed by the track listing of the official version which put the songs in random order and I was also annoyed by the mixing of some of the tracks (Super Gore Nest being the biggest offender). I set to do something about it, reordering the tracks to tell the game’s story in musical form (as was the case with DOOM 2016’s OST), smoothing out the transitions and even re-mixing some tracks completely (examples include Super Gore Nest or Armored Response Coalition), re-doing the stitches and cutting out ballast. Hopefully, my changes met my goal to improve the pacing and make a more dynamic, logical and pleasant experience.

There’s also a comment from the uploader with further details:

Basically, there were two things that bothered me about the official release: mixing and ordering. The 2016 soundtrack told the story of the game in musical form. It was divided into chapters which began with an excerpt from the Slayer’s Testament and the tracks were laid out in chronological order (with a few liberties). Eternal’s soundtrack on the other hand, is ordered seemingly randomly.

I therefore set out to rectify this. I replayed the game with every sounds other than music off and carefully listened to the motifs and matched them with songs from the soundtrack. I then made a rough ordering and then tried to have it make sense in the larger picture. Having the songs just end with a fade out (like many of those mixed by Mossholder do!) is kinda lame, especially when some tracks are thematically connected (a good example is “A Slayer City” and “Meathook” - “A Slayer City” being essentially a prelude to “Meathook”). So I edited nearly all the tracks to make them link to each other as seemlessly as I was able to.

This brings me to the second point and that’s mixing which is, to say it mildly, not perfect in the official release. The biggest offender imo is “Super Gore Nest”, or to be more precise, “Slayer Gore”. This track contains the music which plays in game in level Super Gore Nest as a build up to the “shredding” music which we know as the “Super Gore Nest” track. In the official OST, this track is incredibly long, it’s 4 minutes of buildup with no payoff. For my version, I trimmed it down, added a drop and seemlessly continued into “Super Gore Nest” proper. Another example would include the tracks “Armored Response Coalition” and “The Baron of Hell” which are actually two slightly different alterations of the same musical motif, including 90 seconds of music which is literally identical. So what I did, is I identified the point of convergence and combined the two tracks into a single, longer track which is, in my opinion, more satisfying. A final example of the changes I did would be in the track “Final Sin”, mixed by Chad Mossholder, which includes the brass piece which you can hear when the Icon of Sin collapses. However, the same piece is also included in the track “Icon of Sin” which was mixed by Mick Gordon. It makes no sense to have the same motif play twice within the space of 40 seconds, so I removed the duplicate from the Chad track and used the Mick version (which is slightly higher quality) and then had the rest of the “Final Sin” track emerge from that.

I haven’t listened to the soundtrack or played the game (still slowly working my way through Doom 2016 :slight_smile:), but from comparing the track listings, it looks like the YouTube video might drop about 10 of the tracks from the official release and shorten many of the remaining ones. I would guess that you’d want to create new recordings for the YouTube versions of the tracks, with “edit of” relationships pointing to the corresponding official recordings and “compiler” (or maybe “DJ-mixer”?) relationships to “the_kovic”.

I’m even less sure about this part, but my guess is that it’d be appropriate to add this as a new release within the official release group, still credited to Mick Gordon. See e.g. Super Mario World Restored, still credited to 近藤浩治 and included in the SUPER MARIO WORLD release group.

(Tangentially, I just learned that there’s a recent controversy about the official soundtrack release.)

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We were just talking about Doom Eternal and all its fan edits on Discord! A hot topic again with all the current drama, that derat has mentioned.

I would also add this as a bootleg release into the official release group - the Doom Eternal soundtrack has so many ‘fix’ versions that it would be really useful to get them into the database. Particularly as some incorrect AcoustID’s are being added to the official soundtrack recordings, presumably from these bootlegs.

I would have the album/track artists as Mick Gordon, take out Chad Mossholder credits, and credit the fan/bootlegger as the arranger. Potentially as a co-artist if they did a lot of editing, but I’d lean towards not.

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Thanks for the help guys. I have added the album, but I am unsure where to add the_kovic as the “arranger”. I would also appreciate if you could look over what I added and let me know how I did and if anything else should be changed/updated. Thanks!

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Nice one!

To set the_kovic as arranger:

  • click on the ‘Edit Relationships’ tab.
  • Then, at the bottom: Release Relationships > Add relationship
  • Then you can set type ‘arranger’
  • the_kovic isn’t in the database as an artist so you can click ‘Add a new artist’ in the artist field and add him from there

I know it sounds like a hassle but once you’ve done it once you’re good to go with adding any relationships! It’s pretty quick.

I made some other small changes:

  • No barcode, no label, no catalog number (can see that all from the Youtube source)
  • Added a disambiguation ‘the_kovic remix’, as that’s what will differentiate this from all the other Youtube remixes/remasters
  • Added a disambiguation ‘the_kovic remix’ to all the recordings, so they don’t get confused with the main tracks when searching etc. I use a script to set them all at once, otherwise it would be painful…

:smiley:

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I added a few new albums that I’d love for you guys to take a look at and make sure I added correctly:

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Lo-fi Diablo beats, I’m definitely going to have to check those out! What a great meme/genre…

If you want to dig in more, there is something you could do with the remixes. Where there are going to be other releases with the same tracklisting/track names, it can get confusing to identify which recording is which, and sometimes they get incorrectly merged. e.g. there’s a bunch of different ‘cultist prayer’ tracks by Mick Gordon.

In those cases a recording disambiguation is very useful. Setting them one by one is a mugs game, in seriously, so you can use the script ‘set recording comments for a release’ here.

Your release disambiguations are looking good (including capitalisation!), you can usually use the same for all the tracks, e.g. ‘Edgeline Gaming remix’

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Cool!

One question in my mind is whether the Diablo releases should be attributed to Matt Uelmen (the original composer), RezoDrone (the remixers and composers of the lofi beats), or Blizzard Entertainment (the company that released the videos).

It looks like the videos were released on the official Diablo YouTube account. In the video info, RezoDrone gets top billing:

Lofi by Rezodrone (Jason Charles Miller & Jamison Boaz)
Original tracks by Matt Uelmen

This is probably a good test case for the new remixes and mashups guidelines:

A release that was created without any participation from the credited artist (e.g. a remix or mashup album that was created without the knowledge of the original artist(s)) should be credited to the artist who created and released it (the remix or mashup artist) instead of to the original artist.

Uelmen left Blizzard in 2007 per his LinkedIn page, so I’m not sure if he had any involvement beyond his old tracks getting used (which probably didn’t require his okay). It feels a bit weird to me to see these YouTube videos in his official discography on MB. I don’t think he has a social media presence, so I can’t make any guesses about his feelings here.

If Uelmen should indeed be credited as the main artist (as he currently is), then I think that a remixer relationship might be more appropriate than arranger for RezoDrone.

And just to mention it, the track durations seem off. It sounds like the first Diablo video loops around 40:00, so track 3 should probably be around 10:00 in length rather than 2:52:06. :slight_smile:

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Hi guys, back with more questions. So, I’ve added 3 more official Diablo Lofi releases: Rezodrone - MusicBrainz

I’m incredibly annoyed at how inconsistent the person who added these videos to YouTube titled the releases. Some have “Lofi” while some have “LoFi” while some don’t say it’s Lofi at all. Does the Musicbrainz ethos dictate that we should leave these titles as is, since that is how they were titled “officially” or can I change them to all be consistent?

Also, Minecraft has gotten into the Lofi game also with 3 of their own releases. I saw these were already added, but I wanted to ask about how they were titled. The 3 releases are all under the “Minecraft” artist: Minecraft - MusicBrainz

So, first question–the first album Minecraft: Soothing Synths (Monolism Remix) has “Monolism Remix” in the title itself. Should this be removed, and should this album be changed to the Monolism artist per the remix guidelines we talked about above regarding Rezodrone and Diablo?

Second question–the album Minecraft Legends: Laid Back Lutes (Remix) has “(Remix)” in the title–is this necessary or should it be removed? Maybe added as a disambiguation instead?

Third question, very similar–the album Minecraft Dungeons: Tranquil Beats (Lo‐Fi Remix) has “Lo-Fi Remix” in the title–is this necessary or should it be removed? Maybe added as a disambiguation instead?

Is there anything else about these 3 releases you think needs updating/correcting? Like, should the artist actually be “Minecraft”, for example?

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to answer your second set of questions, I believe the remix ETI should be kept. I don’t know of any cases where part of the title like that should be removed. also, since “Minecraft” is used as an artist credit, I believe the release artist should be Minecraft (plus any other release artists given, of course)


for your first set of questions about the Diablo releases, I’d be in favor of keeping the release title as given by the artist

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