The whole Explicit vs Clean thing is used internationally also. You’ll certainly find both versions of songs in a variety of places.
Whilst the US started the “Explicit Content” “logo”, it’s now the official indicator for physical media in many other countries, including the UK as well.
That is true, and I do recognise that.
As stated in my original post, (and this may just be me) I personally would advocate flagging Clean vs Explicit based on some kind of official designation only (packaging etc).
Here’s my 2¢:
Rather than trying to figure out some rule for what qualifies as official or relying on people’s opinions of what counts as naughty language — Why not add a recording-recording relationship or relationship flag “[censored] edit of”. The meaning of that AR should be unambiguous, and the presence of absence of a censored edit should allow a tagger to mark whether the track is “clean”/explicit.
Classifying a song/album as clean or explicit, is it necessary? Will it have a beneficial impact for MB and its users? Would it prevent errant RG mergers?
IMHO I don’t think so. But, if a user would like it to be optionally available through Picard via a script addition or plug in for their own use I’m all in. Some additional info on PAL can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_Advisory . PAL was/is primarily initiated for identification purposes during a retail purchase. (From what I have read)
Would it be helpful for a Picard user going through their library to identify explicit songs? If, for example, they don’t think that Afroman singing “Because I Got High” might be explicit, a flag sure won’t make any difference. Just sayin…
“Hello ladies” that line makes me chuckle every time.
I can imagine someone wanting to put together a “family friendly” playlist that excludes explicit tracks.
Alternately, I can imagine someone not liking the censored versions and only wanting to hear explicit versions…
Past the borders of English speaking people countries, we don’t give a damn.
I really don’t hear/feel/grasp the lyrics myself when I listen to non-French songs except if I really focus and repeat-1 the track 10 times.
It’s why they don’t bother having two versions exported. I just hope they do export the original versions.
If the lyrics don’t matter to you, why do you care whether it’s the original or not?
It’s like when I prefer hearing the original actor voices in any non-French language (subtitled in French) film rather than French dubbing.
Many people will prefer original versions, first hands, rather than edited versions.
If the lyrics don’t come straight to my heart, because of the language, there is still the original sonority and intention.
That makes sense, but it sounds like you would therefore want to avoid tracks tagged as “clean” if that option was available.
Well my only request to this topic remains that I should not need any extra edit step for something that I never see:
Which is exactly my point I have a lot of US stuff and this is the exact reason why I want to know which tracks from my library have explicit versions and to be able to easily find them.
Don’t all these tracks have a (disambiguration) already in the titles? If it is a legal thing in the USA then doesn’t that mean it is already on the cover therefore it has already been entered into the database?
This is what I don’t get about the question. The data should already have been entered when those singles were added to the database.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe in the context we’re discussing here, “clean” does not mean “has no rude lyrics” but rather “this is a censored/edited version of a recording that also exists in a version that has been designated ‘explicit’”. In that case, to @jesus2099’s point, we wouldn’t expect anyone to be checking a ‘clean’ box on instrumental jazz, or classical, or kids’ music releases.
Thinking of it in those terms, @Hawke’s suggestion upthread makes a lot of sense. If you view it as a recording-recording (or release-release) relationship, then it’s clear that the one can’t exist without the other, and starting with either version, it’s simple to identify its counterpart.
Yes, I can see the relationship being enough (so no need for disambiguation or new tags if mb has both releases/recordings). You could then also show a little icon somewhere in the UI for these releases/recordings, e.g. like on this iTunes release: Take off Your Pants and Jacket - Album by blink-182 - Apple Music.
Yup, tags would definitely be a great way to store niche details like this. And it means you can go ahead and add the data and wait for Picard to catch up later.
The recording relationships… why not?
Oh now I understand more the issue. You don’t see explicit and clean comments directly in the tracklists!
I am so used to INLINE STUFF that displays it in release page that I forgot it was not the case for pure MB website.
I think it is slightly a pity to not have recording comments shown in release page. But I understand also how cluttering it could become, although most of the time, it looks “great:”
This is just an old screenshot I found at some old page and I am on my phone right now (no user script) but imagine clean or explicit instead of promo film.
Actually, I just realized that some tracks only have explicit versions on a studio album, so the following case could occur:
An album has been released, with both explicit and clean versions of the track which has a duration of 4:00. Later, a radio version with a duration of 3:00 has been released. This track is included on VA compilation albums, and this version is clean. In this case there would be no explicit radio version of this track.
Additionally, I think identifying the “correct” explicit release might be hard pretty often (if we also had release-release relationships) so I still think tags are the ideal way to go about this. The tags could be the ones responsible for the little UI icons that I mentioned in my previous reply.
With relationships, couldn’t that be represented as: the clean radio version is an edit of (without the ‘clean/censored’ attribute) the clean 4:00 version, which in turn is marked as a ‘clean’ edit of the explicit 4:00 version?
I haven’t thought about this, but yeah, it could be.