I am mostly trying to tag theme park music CDs, where recording artists and composers are often omitted entirely (but can usually be tracked down).
I’d definitely prefer the composer to [Disney], but I’d also prefer just [unknown] to [Disney].
In the artist field, right?
If we’re to keep [Disney] at all, it should be merged into [unknown] and used as an artist credit, as per the guideline.
OK, so you are saying, if we replace the composers in the artist field with a special purpose artist, we should just use [unknown], not [Disney], right?
The “soundtrack composer as recording artist” guideline seems to follow the classical guideline, which makes sense for most soundtracks that are orchestral in nature.
But I think most theme park “soundtracks” are more similar to a “pop compilation” release than a “classical” or “soundtrack” release. They usually have different recording artists, they are usually not completely orchestral in nature, they are usually composed by many different people, and the tracks are usually recorded at different times. Therefore, I would prefer them to list the recording artist as [unknown] if they are truly unknown, as in “pop” releases, and keep the composers in the composer field.
By the way, there is an idea mentioned in this forum thread that may eventually fix this issue. It was suggested that Musicbrainz add a “classical” tag to classical releases (and classical-like soundtracks), to allow a user preference toggle (on the site and in Picard) to change the way track artists are presented (i.e. do we use the performer or the composer as “artist”?).
What do you think about the Disneyland Band track? I have a lot of tracks like that, where the artist is listed in the title.