Featured Artists, Guest Vocals, and Additional Vocals

MusicBrainz Style
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Curious about potential differences between crediting featured artists, guest vocals, and additional vocals.

If a release attributes guest/additional vocals, is that the same as a featured artist?

Linear notes for Divination by In Hearts Wake credit guest vocals to Winston McCall. Is this entered as:

a) In Hearts Wake feat. Winston McCall
or
b) In Hearts Wake guest vocals by Winston McCall

a) is very commonly how it’s attributed in digital versions, but b) is consistent with the release and the style principle: “You should generally enter the credit as it appears on the release…”

Also some releases have tons of additional vocal credits that don’t really seem to be features (the physical release of Opeth’s In Cauda Venenum has about 7 spoken word vocal credits).

I understand the impact of a featured artist who is prominent in the genre needing a credit as opposed to the band’s friends who do chants and are listed as “guest vocalists”, but how can I distinguish this when interchangeable language is used on releases? Should I do some research and enter this at my own discretion or is there a more “official” way to do this, like seeing if an artist is already entered into the database?

If a release credits vocals that have no track attribution, how do you credit them?

Time, the Valuator gives 4 additional vocals credits on their release of How Fleeting, How Fragile, but none are credited in the physical materials and only 2 are credited on the digital version. Also since they are credited as additional vocals, I would imagine it would be:

a) Time, the Valuator additional vocals by Nico Schiesewitz
instead of the more commonly accepted:
b) Time, the Valuator feat. Nico Schiesewitz

A little semantic sure, but this would be helpful for me to know going forward with cataloguing some fairly unknown releases.

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welcome to the forums, BusterEverett~

for situations like this, I would credit as on the release. however, there’s a vocal relationship that might work better in cases like this. I’d only add featured artists to the tracklist if it says “featuring” (or some variation) somewhere on the release. guest and additional credits can be added in the Relationships Editor (on a release, click “Edit Relationships”)

image

if there is a featured credit on a release for that recording, I would add it to the artist credits of the recording, (note that they can be different from track artist credits)

edit because I accidentally posted early, lol:

how I’d enter the three examples you gave above:

  1. add Winston McCall as a featured artist on the digital versions that have him, but not the physical release you shared a pic of. add him as guest vocalist on the recording, so that he’s credited on both.
  2. add them as (guest) spoken vocal credits to the release, unless you know which tracks they were on, then add them to the recordings that apply.
  3. follow the same rules as above, add them to the release, unless you know which tracks the credits apply to.

“guest” vocal/instrument credits apply when the vocalist/instrumentalist aren’t a member of the group.

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In fact I will use guest if the booklet says guest, additional or supporting if the booklet says so.
Otherwise, I would not use them, not try to guess them, otherwise.
But maybe I’m being over-cautious.

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