Some editors are concerned about the removal of featured artists from Release titles.
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/50159712
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/50159292
I’d like to know more about their concerns and see where a wider discussion might go.
Hence this thread.
The featured artist wasn’t removed. But it looks removed instead of moved because it was added in a different edit.
Move = remove from X and add place in Y
He did the correct thing according to the MB rules. Other places have their rules. We have ours. We do things according to ours.
.
*I’m actually concerned that some of those edits will cause a failed dependency.
1 Like
The direction of the edits look good to me.
What I am asking for is more about the concerns of editors who see things differently to the current guidelines.
Maybe those guidelines are good enough around this issue. Or maybe they can be improved.
The disagreeing editors are the people who may be able to show us how the guidelines can be improved.
I am not concerned about someone wanting to do what last.fm does. That’s a silly argument.
I don’t know who, when, or why the rules were made. But it makes total sense to me that a song title is a song title and not a song title plus artist. If the title includes the artist, who is the artist?
In most situations “that a song title is a song title and not a song title plus artist” makes good sense to me too.
However maybe the editors who disagree can see something we can’t.
Something that would be good to include in the style guidelines.
If the MB editor community thought that they were pointing out something that was important about song titles the guideline could be changed.
I’m pretty sure there’s a Picard plugin that moves the featured artist back to the song title.
5 Likes
hello,
Personally, I think the featuring should stay in the title for two reason :
- Its easier to dissociate the original track and the featured
- Its easier to do track recognition with picard because when you download the song, most of them have the feat included in the title. So if you removed it, picard will not find the song in the database.
I think rules can change. Maybe MusicBrainz rule about featuring was made a long time ago, when there wasn’t so much featuring work. I mean, in electronic music, we know a lot of song only when they are featured with some dj…so its in our culture to have the featuring in the title…
1 Like
This was made in 2011 specifically to give actual proper credit to featured artists 
1 Like
okey thx, and is there a thread where this question was debated ?
@yuioen - have a look into Picard’s plugins. There is one in there called “Feat. Artist in Titles” that will put things back as you want them.
3 Likes
Just wanted to say thanks to @yuioen - I made a few notes on their edits and they have been very responsive in fixing the issues I pointed out, even though they may not agree with them.
I remember when I first started submitting releases and the style guidelines often seemed strange/wrong, but after a while I realised that people with a lot more experience have spent a significant amount of time and effort writing them. That’s not to say they should be set in stone, and there will be always be corner cases, but I’m yet to see any rules that I think require major changes.
5 Likes
Hi there. I was just asking myself the question “where does the feat. artist belong to?” because on one album I have it in the track title, but the next album I was fetching from MusicBrainz was showing the feat. artist in the artist/interpret column.
What is now the correct way?
1 Like
The reason for those plugins is it allows you to tag your files in the way you want to see it in your own personal collection.
Maybe you want to see the “feat artist” as part of the song title on your iPod when playing the tune. That is where the plugin helps you out.
Me, I like the default of MB that puts the Artists into the Artists field. They then get correct recognition for their works, and can be looked up separately in the database. Being able to trace who else they worked with.
In my own collection I like the default as all the artist names end up correctly credited in my music.
And my Media Centre (KODI) can then find that artist in a search.
We all have different uses for our music.
But you will find a MB editor will always take the (feat. artist) off of the Recording name and move it to the Artist field where it belongs. That is the “Correct Way” according to the database guidelines.
3 Likes
Yes, since we have the Artist Credits feature, featured artists have been moved from the title field to the artist field.
2 Likes
I had 20 years of project management, IT integrations, data management, and M&A experience and consulting before I became disabled. One thing that has me absolutely nuts, over the years, is the steralization of my release titles causing duplicates with iTunes. Furthermore, this isn’t just featured artists in the titles but also remastered, expanded, deluxe, anniversary editions that are part of the title. Removing this information has nothing to do with giving the artists credits since this information is listed in the song titles mostly. Also, using the Picard plugin is not acceptable since this will add featured artists to all my music releases. I believe we should keep release titles as release titles are expected to show and are shown on music streaming/purchasing websites. Otherwise, we are sanitizing the data and not properly distinguishing the releases as intended. Additional thoughts?
i’m not totally sure what the issue is. musicbrainz does not (or, at least should not, according to style guidelines) remove information like Deluxe and Anniversary from the titles. i don’t really understand why the picard solution won’t work for you either.
in any case, musicbrainz is not a tagging website. it is a music database that happens to be useful for tagging. i don’t think decisions should be made based on how they impact picard users. i’m sure there are scripts that could help with the issue you’re having 
3 Likes
You might want to read this blog post:
As well as this older topic discussing the philosophy/purpose of MusicBrainz:
3 Likes