Mate, we’re categorizing art. I understand the power of an analogy, but we aren’t filing away ones and zeros, or defining transportation vehicles, or counting a jar of jellybeans. When categorizing art…artistic intention should be taken into account…in the categorizing…of…you know…art… I really don’t think that’s such an outlandish concept. I mean, we already do it for other aspects of a discography on the site. But you seem to intentionally leave that key aspect out of your perspective every single time.
I don’t really know what else I can say that I haven’t said before— I understand your position, I do, and for a lot of releases, it makes perfect sense. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Just not for all releases.
There’s not much more discourse to engage in if you’re stuck driving home the idea that what you already know and understand to be truth & fact is the only path forward, and that every single release needs to fall in line with these preconceived notions. And it’s odd because I still have yet to hear any real, tangible and harmful downside to only selecting the “demo” type for a release that’s literally titled “Demo II” on the front cover. If it was 100% necessary to select a primary, I assume it would have been coded in such a way that we would be forced to select one.
Exactly. Which is why it doesn’t make a lick of sense to incorrectly state that a band released 13 albums (when in reality everybody knows they only released 1) by applying the album tag to their demo tapes based off some loose interpretations and definitions of an album. But yeah, who cares about what the artist intended, right?
and i still havent seen any reason why this wouldn’t fall under the “other” categorie.
everytime you talk about the types its sounds like the primary types and the secondary types are just the same of a type part.
but they are totally different and have totally different functionallity. and it feels like you don’t understand that.
yes, again you are talking about something totally different.
you are talking about what is on the release not what is the format of the release.
i understand that something CAN be a soundtrack BUT if the format of the soundtrack is an album then it isn’t JUST a soundtrack, it is a soundtrack that is produced in ALBUM format.
if you don’t produce it as an album OR EP or Single? then what is it? something else? (other) or is it NOTHING?
… Isn’t that kind of the entire point? That it’s something totally different?
Maybe the disconnect here is that some folks still see the term demo only as a fixed descriptor for the type/nature/kind/version of the recordings that are found on a release. Kind of like how “live” is a good descriptor of the recordings found on a release. By doing this, we’re acting as if that is the only time the term demo is used and that it only has one meaning. Which is clearly not the case. For someone to only place weight in the conventional/historical definition of the word demo, they would effectively be conflating two different concepts:
Demonstrative versions/recordings of a song or songs.
A demo release.
They aren’t one and the same.
As mentioned earlier, Metallica recorded demonstrative tracks for their Justice album. The Justice demos were all done with the intention that they will be changed, rearranged, rewritten, added to, worked on, etc. and eventually re-recorded when they enter the studio for the album. They are demoing out their material. Seeing what works and what doesn’t. These are demonstrative versions/recordings of their songs. They are not the final product, nor were they ever intended to be. I don’t think they even released them publicly until decades later.
The band Roses, on the other hand, compose four songs. They write the lyrics. They finalize their material and then after all is said and done, they enter the studio with a professional engineer to record, mix and master the release. The end result is a self-proclaimed demo titled In Flowers. These recordings are the finality of the songs in question. They aren’t demoed-out versions of the songs. They aren’t roughly jotted down ideas thrown together. They aren’t using it to remember riffs or to give to each other to bounce ideas off. In Flowers makes its way to both physical and digital formats and is a fundamental part of their official output. But it’s a demo. Because that’s what they consider In Flowers to be. It’s just not comprised of demoed versions of their songs.
The Metallica example is not representative of all music that falls under the umbrella term “demo”. In fact, I would estimate that most demo releases probably do not have that intention at all.
Even reading through the Wiki you linked, it’s almost shocking how little anything in that entire article applies to thousands of demo releases out there. It’s almost as if the public’s entire view is based off massive artists like Metallica or Bob Dylan or whatever. Which it is. Because that’s how popularity, population and numbers work.
While not a perfect comparison, all of this kind of reminds me of a similar situation regarding “promo” releases from punk and metal bands, which was discussed by @aerozol and @IAmTheBlackMetal here: Edit #84254853 - MusicBrainz
A term, which conventionally meant one thing to the big names in the music industry, has effectively morphed into its own thing in the underground and taken on a borderline completely different meaning. Is it valid? Depends on who you ask. I don’t see why not. Times change. Definitions evolve. Art gonna art.
To go back to your transportation analogy— maybe you’re having a hard time seeing that a demo is not just a passenger (type of recording), but can also be a mode of transportation in and of itself (type of release). After all, a person doesn’t need a kayak to get somewhere. They don’t need a car, or a plane, or an F1. They can just walk. They are their own means of transportation.
In my opinion, the underground has effectively created a ~new~ type/format/medium/whatever, and it’s the demo release.
I don’t know how much more I can discuss this, unfortunately. I never thought I’d have so much to say about the concept of a demo, but here we are
I think I can see both side of this argument’s merits and can perhaps try to bridge the gaps a bit.
I think you’re getting a little too hung up here on the album tag in that if something is tagged as album/demo it must be considered in the bands main discography of releases which I don’t think I’ve ever thought true (and the GUI helps support this by splitting album/demos from albums). It’s the same way in that an album/compilation or album/live release is also not considered part of a bands main discography of full-length releases. To me, see a band that released 1 album and 12 album/demos, I read it as a band released 1 album and 12 demos and that the demos are close to the same length as the band’s full length material.
As for this, that is because in the metal and (I think most, at least hardcore) punk music culture, a demo is a type of release in the same way an EP vs an Album is. Bands will often specifically differentiate that a release is an album vs ep vs demo and never combining those terms. Conversely bands will state that something is a split album or split ep or split demo. This is also likely where Vatican is getting hung up on a demo also being marked as an album at the same time. Additionally, Vatican made an excellent point in that at some points in metal history, demos mimicked the usual term of demonstrative recordings however nowadays plenty of bands release demos that are professionally recorded and intended to stand alone from any other releases.
Now musicbrainz covers more than just these niche subgenres so obviously compromises must be made to accommodate other uses of the same terms. Personally, I was happy to use album vs ep to differentiate the length of said demo but as this whole discussion has shown, that terminology does get confusing to some. I don’t think there is an issue going forward continuing using album/ep/single to differentiate length and I also don’t see an issue marking all demos as other. I do think leaving a field blank specifically on metal and punk demos does feel a bit bad as some applications utilizing the musicbrainz database might not check secondary types but I understand where Vatican is coming from on the artistic intent viewpoint.
From the demos I own, there is often the case that band demos are not official releases. They’ve not always hit the shops and tend to be put out on cassette and\or CD-R. Not really an official album, but something to either say “this is us, sign us up” or “this is what we are working on”.
They are officially released by the band, but not on the band label.
And you are both right which is why there is no simple answer here.
It’s nice to be reassured I’m not living in Crazy Town, lol.
Whichever way the community decides to move forward, I’m of course on board with— provided there is at least some degree of compromise between popular and underground music. Beating a dead horse here, but I do firmly believe intent should hold more weight than it currently does.
Upon reflection, I see how using the “other” type would be preferable to leaving the primary empty in some situations. Perhaps it could be a good way to bridge the divide, and I would be open to using it more if others think it’s the smart choice.
I can also see why someone would apply the album+demo and EP+demo tags (length, or track count), but it still seems as if we’re shoehorning/imposing a marketing term onto these releases that the bands have specifically stayed away from when putting out these demos. It feels wrong. But such is the beauty of open source and collaborative projects. No one can be satisfied 100% and whatever is best for the data is best for the people.
I would still like to hear more about some of the applications that utilize the MB database, and how blank primaries will affect them— I’m reading a lot of might’s and possibly’s, but I’d love to learn more about it in depth if anyone can provide more insight?
This was definitely the case back in the 80s, 90s, and 00s and still exists in some areas but a huge number of modern death and black metal are releasing purposeful demos without the intent to promote to getting signed by a label or similar.
I can’t say for certain which those may be but there are quite a few services that use musicbrainz. Last.fm being a massive user that regularly updates their metadata from muscibrainz. I myself make applications using last.fm data and musicbrainz data in conjunction. That being said, I am well versed in the data that I know to use both types and I do not believe last.fm checks release group types at all. Just two examples of some of the usages even though neither is an issue in this instance. That being said, as someone who works in programming for a profession, I too often see terrible usage of APIs by people who do not bother to fully understand the data they’re scraping and then go on to present it as full and complete.
Official, but not really for the list of “albums” that they put in their discography?
This is how I’d understand about keeping them separated from the “official discography”.
Same as the “album, live” are kept in a separate list.
I don’t see the need to use “other” as “Album, demo” or “[none], demo” seem just as clear to me. “These are demos of stuff we are doing but not fully structured into an official release”. Leaving the primary blank seems perfectly logical.
One thing to keep in mind is that you will be entering tricky territory when a band releases demo #6 and their messaging is suddenly “we released our demo EP”. You might end up breaking the grouping on MB in a even more annoying way than currently.
I am really sympathetic to your case (I originally always left the primary type blank!) but I wouldn’t over estimate artist intent - I assume most bands really don’t care how a site like MB catalogues their music, as long as the demo part is clear.
For what it’s worth, bands I’ve been in have definitely interchangeably used “demo” and “demo EP” depending on the wind direction on the day and who’s writing (punk not bm).
For what it’s worth, we’ve considered in the past deleting “Other” as a RG type since in this case we consider it as basically the same as empty and it’s just there so that people who need to pick something all the time won’t pick something wrong - “Other” is usually a mess anyway, and STYLE-504 asks to get rid of it almost everywhere.
The stuff for filtering non-official-single-artist RGs is something I have had code for since 2021 but never got merged. I’ll see if I can get it updated and looked at by the team.
There was also the time before “Demo” existed where demos where supposed to be entered as “Other”. There are probably still cases like this in the database.
Imo, this is good.
Without “other”, the mess usually gets spread over the “other non other”-options.
Out of sight, but still there. That’s why I usually support options like misc./other/etc. on any level. At least it offers a place to gather all that is either a mess, or is for some reason ambiguous of nature.
I consider an empty option usually as “skipped that one” vs. the other option as “the other options don’t feel right”.
The problem is “empty” is still right after you add one more type (it’s just missing the type still) - “other” is actively wrong in that case, since it’s no longer “none of the types”
Food for thought…
I’m not sure it would be wrong in all cases. It could be one of the common types + also something different that is too uncommon to expect having it readily available as a type.
Very hypothetical… as I can’t think of a real life example atm.
- “Other” is usually a mess anyway, and 
but never got merged. I’ll see if I can get it updated and looked at by the team.