There have been two different requests for a “cover” type for release groups consisting mostly or exclusively of covers (STYLE-555 and STYLE-689).
I’ll say that personally I don’t see a need to specify anything about these albums - IMO they’re just albums that happen to have cover versions in them. But I’ve seen people speak about artists recording “a cover album” in the past, so it might be many people do think this is important to have, in which case I’d like to know!
Let’s not go into the “what exactly counts as a cover” debate right now - this is more about whether the general idea is desirable, although it would need to be better defined before implementing it.
I don’t see a need for it, but I don’t have a problem with it in principle either.
One thing to consider is how it might appear on artists’ release pages.
For example, artists like the Vitamin String Quartet which produce mostly/entirely tribute albums (incidentally, is there any difference between the two? Surely most/all tribute albums are also cover albums)…those artists are going to have some oddly divided pages if we add this release type.
Also, what about a single which happens to contain a song “cover”. Would those all becomes “cover singles”? That seems wrong to me.
I would prefer that when majority cover works is calculated in releases, then the release group gets a special cover album mark.
No need to post-edit thousands of existing release groups.
Everything that could be done automatically (even as delayed batch), should not be given to edit.
I’ve closed the ticket as won’t fix for now - this can be revisited if enough people are interested: readers from the future, feel free to necro this thread if you think that is the case.
