For me it’s actually the first time I read about the idea not to list hidden tracks because of artist intent. I’m not editing that much anymore, so maybe the general view on this changed and I just haven’t noticed. But if that’s the case let me state here that I find it a horrible idea to not list hidden tracks claiming artist intent. Other databases, e.g. Discogs also list them.
Yes, of course the artist’s intention was to hide the track, to make it kind of a surprise to the listener. But for trying then to catalogue such releases I think it is essential to list the hidden parts as well.
There are different ways to hide a track. On analogue media (LPs, tapes etc.) it usually was just some additional content added after a longer pause after the last listed track. So you don’t know about this hidden content you just find it if you keep the medium playing after it already “finished” (or in case of LP you inspect it carefully).
When CDs came around things got more tricky to hide something, as the CD lists the individual tracks. So just slamming an additional track on the end does not work, the listener would immediately see it and can skip to it. There are three common tricks applied:
- The hidden content is just appended to the last CD track after a longer period of silence.
- After the last official track several empty tracks are added and as the very last one (e.g track 99) the hidden content appears.
- The most sneaky method: The hidden content is added as a pregap track before track 1. This is sometimes really hidden, as not all players allow accessing it.
So as I understand it we are talking solely about case 1. here and “artist intent” is claimed here. I find it odd, as the intention of the artist is the same for all three cases. They are just different approaches playing with the technical abilities and restrictions of the medium. So if we claim artist intent for hidden tracks we should do not list the hidden tracks of any of the above 3 cases for CD and also not for analog media. Sorry, but for me that makes no sense at all.
What causes the discussion for case 1 of course is that on MB the tracks on release in case of a CD are tied to the physically encoded tracks on the CD itself. MB lacks the ability to cleanly state that a single CD track is actually divided and contains multiple content. But this is not something that is unique to hidden tracks, and we have a workaround for this by listing the individual parts in the track title.