Since I have started editing works, I have been forced to wade into the weeds of derivative musical pieces. This has at times been a troublesome experience. My problems are mainly caused by the variety of relationships and my failure to understand the difference between them. There is a bewildering jungle out there, but I would like to focus on the distinction between the work-recording relationship “cover of” and the work-work relationships “version of” and “based on”.
Starting with the MB definition of cover: The MusicBrainz documentation gives the helpful description:
Indicates that one entity is a cover of another entity.
Yeah well, I suspected as much. Other editors have asked for clarification in the forum, e.g. here, here, and here. These discussions are interesting, but did not result in a clear conclusion. In one of the threads there was reference to the Wikipedia definition, which currently states:
In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song.
Hence, the concept is mostly relevant to popular music. Also, it excludes different performances by the same artist which in case of substantial changes might be better served by the “revision of” relationship.
Things are getting fuzzy because most covers are not slavish replayings of the original work, but involve a considerable amount of re-arrangement and additional production. This might lead to the point that the elements of the original work have become difficult to recognise. For example, Adeva’s 1989 rendition of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” is set as a cover of the 1965 original version by Otis Redding, although it sounds nothing like it. On the flipside, I have encountered situations in which similar performances received their own work. These were typically linked to the original work with the work-work relationship “version of” or “based on”. According to the documentation for “version of”:
This relationship should only be used when separate works are needed (e.g. when there are significant changes to the lyrics or music). In most cases, new versions of a work should simply be performances of the original work.
and the documentation for “based on” states:
This is used when a new work is based on or includes (parts of) another work. The works are usually by different artists. Common examples would include classical fantasias and variation works, or when a new song is based on a poem or the lyrics of another song. The new work must be a new composition, not just an arrangement or the same music with different or translated lyrics.
To my mind, these categories are highly overlapping with “cover” in practice . Case in point is Samuel Malm’s “Direct Dizko”. This was a moderately succesful club hit in 1999, and some revamped versions were released several years later by other artists. The new releases have been associated with their own separate works that lacked any writing credits to the original creator. As the new versions did not really included sufficiently new elements to warrant a new work, I merged them into the original piece. But it did set me off thinking about what it takes for a recording to deserve a new work. Is this an arbitrary decision at the discretion of the editor (like the one I made) or can rules of thumb be formulated to guide struggling editors like me?
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