Sorry for necrobumping this years-old topic, because I didn’t notice this post before. I’m trying to organize and enter some pan-VOCALOID, especially VOCALOID CHINA doujin albums and EPs (mostly videos released on Niconico/YouTube/Bilibili/SoundCloud etc.), and I’d like to add my 2 cents here.
I read the discussion above, and I perfectly agree with (which are also reflected in my proposal in [Proposal DRAFT added - RFC] Artist field for pan-VOCALOID works - a discussion | 泛VOCALOID作品的艺术家字段填写讨论 | 広義ボカロ作品の「アーティスト」欄記入の討論 - #4 by chariri ):
- Use VA or other artists for Release Artist (if there exist some “Lead Artist”) for compliation releases, unless the circle works like a band (e.g. Yonder Voice).
- Use the circle name for the label, and use “[no label]” for autoreleases without a circle.
However, this seems to be unalign with Style/Specific types of releases/Doujin music - MusicBrainz Wiki regarding the Release Artist part.
Moreover, like the case posted by @lateinautumn :
There are a large amount of works, especially in the VOCALOID CHINA scene, are release without a “main artist” and “lead performer”, unlike their Japanese counterpart where the doujin music is often completed by one single artist and “producer” of a single work is often clear. The aforementioned post by me contains plentiful examples. I’m especially reluctant to put the circle name into the track artist field for a compliation. Reasons:
- Sometimes, there is even no circle name present, especially for video EP releases, releases by the official company, or compliations without a circle like My Hood
- Sometimes, the circle is merely a planner (like the case of 平行四界 Quadimension, which should be attributed as a label), not really “artists”.
For a lot of cases, it would be pretty difficult to decide a “lead artist” for a piece when the original release material only listed people and their roles, but did not put anyone at the “main” position. My proposal for this case is fill the field for people responsible for those roles in order: composition, lyrics, arrangement, voice-manipulation, and planning, but this is a little arbitary (albait borrowed from some other databases and wikis).
Your input would much appreciated.