so, I recently came across this release (just a warning, the cover has cartoon blood)
I was about to import it, but a thought popped into my head… how do I credit these tracks?
at first glance, it may seem obvious. however, the tracks consist entirely* of silence.
*or at least nearly entirely, I haven’t listened all the way through yet
I see a few options, perhaps there’s more
- credit these tracks as credited on the release to the “original” artists, i.e. Depeche Mode credited as Depeche Mode
- credit the tracks to Genreal Mymbloe as the credited artist, i.e. Genreal Mymbloe credited as Depeche Mode
my first thought is to go with option 2, but then again, if they are in fact really super duper quiet remixes of those tracks, maybe they should be credited as such? and perhaps artist intent could come into play too?
I can download the album and put them in Audacity or something in the next couple days… unless someone beats me to it
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As they quote “It might look like it does, but none of the content here breaches copyright.” then surely all you have there is multiple tracks of 20ish seconds of silence with inventive track names. I see nothing credited to original artists. Not even a sample is used.
for what it’s worth, the hyphenated track titles are just how Bandcamp handles artist credits (track artist - track title), take this compilation release on the same Bandcamp (on MB), for example.
I do know how Bandcamp works. But also look at their other releases. ( Songs About The Green One (and others) | General Mumble | Mumble Etc. ) and on there the track list is a track list. (Notice how track 10 even has a dash in the name)
That is what I see in your example, just the tracks have dashes and band names in them.
This is not a compilation of various artists, it is just a single artist.
This is a good example of something that only uses the other band names as a marketing thing. It is a joke they are playing. It is not something that should appear under Depeche Mode’s discography. They even have intentional spelling typos in some of those fake band names.
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I was going to make an argument for not changing the metadata, but it turns out you’re right in this particular case… lol… downloaded the release, checked that it was all pure digital silence (it is), and found the fake artist names in the track title field. I have entered the release as such.
I do think I will relate the John Cage track to the original work, as that’s what the original piece is… just silence
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But is it the SAME silence? Otherwise Cage could have a legal case against all silences for stealing his work. 
Maybe an “inspired by” link? But really, these should be no where near the original artist discographies.
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It’s definitely a Speedcore remix, you can see that they’ve sped the silence up substantially - from 4:33 to 0:26
(that one did make me laugh 
)
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But it is always annoying how they mash up the volume on everything in the mastering and distort the purity of the original.
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It absolutely butchers the original, no doubt about it!
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If it’s a silent release, wouldn’t it be more simple to remove it from MB?
I just added it to MusicBrainz, so now it wouldn’t…
for what it’s worth, there’s several silent (or nearly silent) releases and recordings already on here, like SILENCE PARTY and many recordings of 4′33″ (mentioned above)
Silent releases are still valid. They had to choose how to make their silence, how long it needed to be, get the volume just right. And ultimately name it. These are all still musical decisions.
I only know one piece of work that John Cage did, so it can work towards your fame.
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