Confusion around the usage of the “Single from” relationship

Hello everyone!

I joined the community a little more than a month ago. I’m still fairly new, although I’ve already made 188 edits and now have normal user status. At the moment, I’m working with the kis-kis group in the MusicBrainz database.

A common situation with their releases is that some tracks are first released as singles and later included in albums. For such cases, two relationships seem relevant: Included in and Single from.

According to the Included in relationship guidelines:

To link a single that got included as part of an album, use the “Single from” relationship.

This relationship is already used for this release group.

However, the wording shown on the single’s release group page is “single/EP which was taken from”. To me, this phrasing can be interpreted as if the single was released after the album and derived from it, which is not the case here.

On the album release group page, the corresponding text is “associated singles/EPs”, which feels much more accurate and neutral.

Would it make sense to use a similarly neutral phrasing for singles and EPs as well, for example “associated albums”, to avoid this potential ambiguity?

Thank you.

2 Likes

Hello, @oaetughq ! Welcome to MusicBrainz!

I don’t have much to say about your proposal, but I do have delighted things to say about you. You are contributing your energy to improving the database. You are being diligent about what you add. You are learning the style guidelines and the complicated machinery we have here. You are asking questions and making proposals in the right place. Good for you!

Thank you, and I look forward to your contributions.
—Jim, on MusicBrainz for nearly 20 years now.

5 Likes

“single taken from” is not too odd. I can read it as also talking of the future. “single taken from the soon to be released album”.

1 Like