Community Cleanup #1: Debussy

I corrected a typo in the Disambiguation:

Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

Three the same??? https://beta.musicbrainz.org/release-group/e3f16eac-9880-44be-a051-61072b2a7d57

Have a question about https://beta.musicbrainz.org/recording/b3e8986c-82bf-4103-8e56-b0948978b838/open_edits (posted it in IRC as well) . Seems to me the performer on the recording should just be “Melos Quartett” - the other 4 are the members of the quartet. Seems to me to be a duplication (which in relationships is probably fine - who plays what).

Not sure though???

The packagings differ:

I agree with that. Or else, are we going to put every band member as artist in every band recording? The relationships are fine to encode who did what in the band / in the quartet.

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Yea was not sure about the first one, the cover has just been added. Although the Amazon dates seem to confirm. No worries, just asking (I missed the different media one)

Edit: related to the above three release thing, have not worked this discourse thing out properly yet (sorry!)

Question: I have mostly been shortening the release artist based on the cover so “Claude Debussy” becomes “Debussy”, and have seen this any number of times. However, I cannot see that it says to do that in the guidelines. So you get this happening: https://beta.musicbrainz.org/edit/46933513 . It doesn’t bother me either way but it is the opposite to what I have been doing, and if it’s wrong I need to change my ways.

Can anybody point me to something that clarifies it?

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Unfortunately, that edit had just been closed when you posted about it.

As I said there, I don’t see anything in the style guide saying the composer’s first name should be included. To the contrary, the “artist as credited” field exists specifically for the purpose of preserving the way the artist name was written on the release. The cover art clearly shows this is only “Debussy”, so I believe edit #46933513 is incorrect.

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Yes, I knew it was closing but it needs to be clarified (the edit can always be reversed). It’s not 100% correct anyway with “Elisabeth” (shows as “Elizabeth etc.” on cover).

What is the general style guidance on this point? I tend to add quartet members as performers, especially as sometimes they play a trio - so only the named performers are actually playing even if the quartet is shown as a performer too.
EDIT: Also, quartet membership changes over time, so I like to have the names of the members for that release. BTW I note that even ensemble names can change, e.g. The Nash Ensemble entry has recently been changed to just Nash Ensemble, which changes all releases, even if the release was originally credited as The Nash Ensemble.
Sorry for the digression :smirk:

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This is the old “as on cover”-debate. My ten cents: Who appears on the cover is an artistic (and, of course, commercial) decision (and should thus be mirrored in our Release Artist-s field); how the name appears is basically a graphicist’s choice and should be normalized to full name.

I see no harm done when crediting “as on cover”. Normalized name is still easily available to everyone.

Normalizing doesn’t work too well with non English covers or with artists who’s name isn’t written with latin script. It’s somehow silly to normalize “Tchaikovsky” as “Пётр Ильич Чайковский”. When I see “Чайковский” on my music player it doesn’t tell me that much. We could normalize it to transliterated version but then we would see hundreds of variations, like for example name variations in Discogs. Is it Pjotr Iljitsch, Pyotr Ilyich, Pjotr Iljitsj, Piotr Ilitch…

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There’s the same issue for pop/rock bands. The names can easily and accurately be encoded by relationships (who performed what, who did what track), and can be put into appropriate tags, and searched for and displayed by music software.

I believe the purpose of the Artist(s) field is to capture the major “brand” name of the recording (or names, as often happens in classical music). Some people say all names can be encoded in relationships already, so the field is redundant, however I find the relationships lack the flag “this name is more important than the others” that would help prominently display that name (a bit like it was prominently featured on the cover).

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The Nash Ensemble entry has recently been changed to just Nash Ensemble, which changes all releases, even if the release was originally credited as The Nash Ensemble.

I have not looked at the changes themselves, but what you describe seems wrong to me. If the release was originally credited to The Nash Ensemble, then it should remain that way.

Sorry I was not clear - I was referring to the track relationship, where the change in artist name updates. The “credited as” on the release should stay the same, as you say.

I hold the same opinion for track artists: major names only, in case of classical, composer and maybe a famous performer or two. The various performer relationships and tags are there to give all the detail if need be.

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Quite agree - in fact for classical, stick to the composer - I was referring to the performer relationship between the recording and the artist. (So: what I was trying to say was that if the artist name - i.e. the name of the artist entity - gets changed, this updates the performer relationship and the performer name as originally on the CD gets replaced).

To answer my own issue then (I think): Put the ensemble name in as the recording artist (with the composer as the track artist) and use the “Artist as credited” to keep the original name. The individual members of the quartet can then be added as performers (with instrument).

MBS-8441 is about that :slight_smile: