The editor has been hiding artist into the credited as field (he’s not the only one). Is this an acceptable practice? I had been told before not to, but he says other editors have been approving them in the past. I always understood that we don’t add “with vocal refrain” or “with piano accompaniment”, etc. on recordings/tracks/release. It’s known that the Rhythm Boys on this example are the “vocal refrain”. He has been adding a lot of artists into fields that he knows the performance of credited as “vocal refrain”, instead of just listing them on the recording relationships as vocal. I’m not 100% that I’m right in this and want some input because he’s done a lot of these already. Is this okay?
He also added odd credits like this: Edit #93021728 - MusicBrainz
Hiding Bing Crosby in the name of another artist as “Orchestra” but orchestra was the continuation of Dorsey Brothers. He’s not the only editor I’ve seen do this. This is just not right, IMO.
When we have such a beautifully detailed relational database in our hands to use I can see zero need of making a mess of hidden aliases in this way. Agree with your point of view here
The issue manifests itself in the early days of recording, when few people bought records, much less read the labels. Here is a good example
Rhapsody In Blue
composer George Gershwin
recorded with Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra
1924 and 1927 (acoustic and electric)
Gershwin played piano both times, but was not named on label
referred to as “composer at the piano”)
As with Bing, most of the world has forgotten the headline act, and many compilations are issued without Whiteman mentioned. I am an info freak, so want to pass along as much as I can, including how the original releases were billed. Gershwin and Bing were the unknowns then.
and btw records never used the term “feat.” then
Hiding Bing Crosby in the name of another artist as “Orchestra”
agree, don’t like either
How else can I get “Rhapsody” 1924 to show up under both Gershwin and Whiteman?
I guess better question would be show up in release group list, right?
“Release by [Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra][(The Composer at the piano)]”
btw, Whiteman Concert goes to “Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra”, so this release shows up with the rest of his stuff.
Not sure on the Gershwin releases as I think he may fall under classical which does list performers as recording artists. But all non-classical recordings follow what’s on the label of first release according to guidelines. It’s a historical database as much as it is a tagging database. So, on recordings, we want how the recording was first released as the artist name. All the ones that have “feat.”, etc. will not have that once they are merged into the recording that has the earliest known release of that recording.
since we replaced the research librarian with the computer search engine, something has been lost. I just want to keep both. I agree this should be against the rules except for me. This is why Luke the Drifter shows up on Hank Williams’ page.
This should not be done ever, and anything that is doing this should be reverted. Artist credits should follow what is printed, as the guideline says. I kinda don’t believe I need to be saying this tbh.
“With composer at the piano” is at least a clear credit to a specific person, so if that is printed I can see crediting the composer there. In any case that would probably go under classical guidelines, as mentioned above me in the thread. But only if it’s printed as prominently as the other artists - if not, it’s just a relationship, which is ok! We’re not losing data because of having someone only as a relationship - it can still be found by looking at all the places X played piano. And it cannot be found looking at all the places X was given a prominent credit… which is also correct, since they were not.
This is what the Relationships tab is for on the Artist page. There you can find everything he sang on. Or played maracas. Or produced. There are many roles artists have on a release that can often be uncredited, and it is the Recordings those details can get added to. Ideally with a note in an annotation if it is unusual.
All those unusual details can then be found by looking at the Relationships tab. This allows a computer search to ask “give me the recordings Bing sang on” and get a result. Your trick of calling Bing “Orchestra” would be hidden to that search.
Bing is not special enough to break the database for.
This is one side of the database I enjoy. Adding in those lost relationships to a Recording. So those surprise links can be found when an unusually famous person pops up on a Recording. This is the relational database at its most interesting and powerful
Eventually™ it might be a nice idea to make releases with performance relationships show up on the overview tab if there are no credited releases otherwise, just like how we fall back to VA releases if there are no releases directly credited to the artist. Similar to how Discogs has a “Credits” entry on artist pages.
I promise not to hide artists anymore. We all have to follow the same rules here, at the end of the day. I get my way plenty of times, this time I will go with the team. Thanks and sorry if I caused an uproar.
Agree with your point of view here
