I know I’ve spoken/posted about “fringe releases” before (releases that push the boundaries of the guidelines of what we want to cover with MBz) but I’m not sure about this one:
It’s been in the database for a while now (3 years) and appears to be a very comprehensive (which is good) document of the DVD recording of a comedians live show.
Some more from this submitter (who hasnt been making edits since 2021-ish, under edit 79237380 (Edit #79237380 - MusicBrainz) wcw mentions they have cancer and would be taking a break so I’m not expecting that we would get a response from OP.);
Bumping this as this has again reared its ugly head.
Editor, @Antiguastrea has (to no fault of their own) began issuing removal edits against some of these sorts of releases above; likely because the core idea of the project is to track music centric entities (i.e. CD albums, music concerts, musicians) and not things that may contain a bit of music here and there (i.e. feature films).
I enourage the community to discuss here what should and shouldn’t be accepted, then hopefully we can get something written down and work from there.
I agree with the notion to remove releases that contain no “pure” music content (i.e. no music videos, no interviews with a musician, no recordings of a conert) but just so happen to have some music “in the background” or appear in a montage.
I feel that would be better suited to a film-brainz based project, which is yet to materialize.
I even try to promote this with my own “film-y” releases I publish to the database by ONLY including the music bit, I couldn’t give too hoots about the feature film content as it has no relevancy on the goal of the project.
I believe if it’s a movie only, it shouldn’t be here. It’s a movie bundled with a music release, then yes, I can see it staying. If it’s a movie version of a music performance (live) or music video collections, etc., then yes. I don’t think we need mediums that are solely the movie (chapter lengths, etc.) and we should annotate the DVD and just show the music medium, but I wouldn’t remove any that have already been added, personally. Comedy is a gray area in that I can see a video being included, especially if it has also been released on CD or digital in audio only format. But not sure if a video from a TV special should be included.
Trying to think about the reason why these get added, and the only thing I can think of is that there might be audio-only rips floating around? In which case, if they are widespread, I would be okay with them existing as bootlegs. But I don’t really think that’s the case, this seems to be stuff from personal collections.
I’ve been told that MusicBrainz should actually be AudioBrainz, as we allow podcasts, audio-books, comedy audio releases and many other forms of non-music audio. So something not being music is not a exclusion criterion.
But ‘something that has audio in it’ clearly can’t be the inclusion criterion, because that’s far to broad. Then every film, or television broadcast, advertisement, game, or even any object that makes sound should be added. That’s just plain silly. A line needs to be drawn somewhere, but it would be nice to find some logical rules to do so.
It would seem to me that it’s important that audio is the dominant element over other elements. In a movie the audio is not dominant, it could be watched with subtitles and that would be far better than the reverse: hearing only the audio but not seeing the video. That explains why a concert DVD release should be included as the audio is clearly dominant, nobody would want to watch the video without audio included. You could maybe see it as actually an audio-release with video just as a bonus.
I think this distinction helps, but the problem of course is that it’s very subjective and imprecise, and it still includes a lot of releases that intuitively don’t seem to fit MB. As others mention, what about comedy? It seems audio is dominant, should therefor all comedy be added? What about a movie that is mostly about the dialogue? What about television talk shows? This is subjective but one could advocate that audio is the dominant element and yet it feels out of place on MusicBrainz. Apparently for non-music it doesn’t feel right to include these, despite audio being dominant.
So this would result in the following rules:
We include
Audio-only releases (including non-musical audio)
Others releases wherein musical audio is the dominant element
And so we exclude:
Non-audio releases
Releases where audio is not dominant
Releases where audio is dominant but it’s non-musical audio.
Don’t know if this makes sense to others, but I think it would solve quite some of the examples mentioned. There are still complicated fringe cases. For instance, what about musicals? They include half musical-audio and half non-musical audio. I wouldn’t know how to deal with these but perhaps someone smarter than me can expand upon my rules.
Other grey items that seem legit are items like CD-ROMs of interviews about music. These don’t seem that much different to a radio show that would be allowed. Even a CD-ROM of interviews about a film seem not much different to a radio show.
Podcasts can often just be a radio show type talk. There are plenty of podcasts of talking about cars and similar in the database. This is a release that is audio dominant, but no music.
Podcasts are audio releases, but not always musical. See also Audiobooks.
I like @RVMWSN’s point of the pictures not being the most important part. This is a good property to focus on.
I think I tend to agree. if a film includes music as bonus features (from a music video to a whole bonus CD), I think it should be welcomed into MusicBrainz. also if it contains other content that’s well within the scope of MusicBrainz, (like radio drama, stand-up comedy, audiobooks, etc.). I feel like stand-up comedy is within the scope of MusicBrainz, since with few exceptions (mostly acts with props and ventriloquists or with a lot of acting), it’s almost exclusively audio.
one point I do want to bring up, I feel like we should include an empty medium for cases where the audio content is seperate from film content, like how I handled this release of Almost Alice (which was released as a standalone CD outside of Mexico, tho I think the medium titles I added might be a bit extra, lol)
also another example of a fringe film release is The Rise and Fall of Five Iron Frenzy, a documentary about the band made by the band (or at least people close to the band?), and it’s been released on the band’s official store. it does have music content besides, which would bring it within the scope, but I feel like these music documentaries could be made to be within the scope? (also, I think I added this before I knew how to make an empty medium… lol)
I have a European CD copy of Almost Alice, and it is clearly a CD of music. So it is kinda odd seeing it popping up as a bonus CD to an official film release. Can’t see what is wrong with those examples of someone typing in the DVD tracks as well if they want (kinda like this example that was put up for delete this week: Cinema Paradiso (deluxe edition))
The CD of music is the important part to document, but if someone wants to add extra details then good on 'em.
The reason these are added are the music CD. Documenting the rest of the package is still interesting.
The Rise and Fall of Five Iron Frenzy - I think a documentary of a band should be here. It is very much music related and is likely to be on the same shelf as your music collection of that artist. Especially if it was released by the artist.
But a copy of Spinal Tap would be a no as that is Film first…
MusicBrainz precedent is that a music CD enclosed in a video product is entered on its own, without the video disc, period. I would still oppose adding a movie as a MB Medium to a MB Release that represents a music enclosure.
(A movie is a “video product”. A concert is “not”, so a concert should be entered in full, with all video disc(s) and/or audio disc(s) in the order intended by the manufacturer.)
while I don’t think I’d go as far as adding recordings for DVD chapters for a film, I do think details for the full package are good to have, including a full list of the mediums (tho prolly not the contents, if they’re not clearly within the scope of MusicBrainz). clarity in this area is better than being technically correct, in my opinion
Going through some of the removals that re-invigorated this discussion, musicals seem to be the next sticking point. Whether they are primarily audio or video is 50/50, I agree.
It is really just the audio sound track lifted form the DVD\VHS release. But never thought of adding those video versions even though it is really only format shifted.
This is actually a bit odd as that is a very visual comedy.
Don’t see this famous musical film in MB
Could easily say that film is very much the musical product of an artist. Much more so than something like Flashdance
Of course it is! And I don’t want to flood MB with films that largely consist of music. But there’s certainly a grey area. Many long-format music videos also have a scripted storyline. But they are still made to promote the music, not as a work on its own. And…
Neither with my music collection. It’s in my Kodi film library and I wouldn’t have any benefit from it being in MB.
just wait until y’all hear about Kpop music videos, which have interconnected storylines, recurring characters, they’re basically movies set to the music, lol
on the topic tho, I could maybe see a place for films by musicians in MusicBrainz, stuff like The Wall, Yellow Submarine, Head, or more recently projects like the story videos for the Gorillaz and Beyonce’s Lemonade (tho I think the latter might be a video album, a slightly different concept). what that place is, I don’t know
Some of these are really making me cringe. I’ll cop to this release:
I hated adding a video track recording of the movie, but I couldn’t leave it with an empty tracklisting and felt that listing the DVD was import to establish the boxset the CD was in.
Completely unrelated, would love to see another *Brainz to cover movies and tv shows…
It isn’t sitting on my Music shelf at home - it is with my film collection.
