How to deal with singles from soundtracks that have ETI such as "Music from", "Theme Song from", etc?

Here are a few examples:

Do you credit it on release title, medium and/or recordings? Do you credit it only if it appears on the cover? Or not credit it at all? There are also cases where they use an ETI with just the name of the movie the song is from, such as:

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(This is all personal opinion, as I don’t think that the guidelines say what to do here.)

I don’t consider (Theme Song from the Apple Original Series “Jane”) or (Music From The Motion Picture “Top Gun: Maverick”) to be part of the songs’ titles, so I don’t think that they belong in the recording names. Note that the existing recording for “Hold My Hand” doesn’t include the movie title in its name.

I probably wouldn’t include it in the track title either unless the release has a tracklist that actually repeats it, e.g.

  1. Hold My Hand (Music From The Motion Picture “Top Gun: Maverick”) ... 3:45
  2. B-Side Filler (Music From The Motion Picture “Top Gun: Maverick”) ...... 3:17

And even then, I’d probably only trust that this was a deliberate choice if this is from a printed physical release rather than a page on an online platform like Spotify.

I think that one could make an argument that the parenthesized portion should be included in the release title if it’s included in the cover art and is consistently used by the artist and label when referring to the release.

I’m also not sure that this qualifies as ETI. The guidelines describe ETI as “additional information on a release or track name that is not part of its main title, but intended to distinguish it from different releases or tracks with the same main title (such as version/remix names or live recording info).” As far as I’m aware, there are no other songs with the same titles by these artists; it feels like more of an exercise in co-branding.

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Yes, you’re right. This is more like a subtitle. I agree with the points you made, but I’m still torn about the release title. If you look at the covers of One Step Closer and Lift Me Up, the movie logo is included and also “Apple TV+ Original Series Soundtrack” for the former, but the information in-between parenthesis as it appears on Spotify (and other services) is not.

I just noticed that the Spider-Man and Fifty Shades URLs don’t seem like singles (note /track/ rather than /album/), so those should probably live in MusicBrainz as part of the albums that include them (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Soundtrack From & Inspired by the Motion Picture) - Compilation by Various Artists | Spotify and Fifty Shades Freed (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) - Compilation by Various Artists | Spotify, respectively) instead of being added as singles.

For the first three, I figured I’d check how some older movie singles were entered, since consistency seems like as good an approach as any here.

  • Change the World by Eric Clapton: front cover includes “From the Motion Picture PHENOMENON” but it isn’t included in the release title
  • (Everything I Do) I Do It for You by Bryan Adams: front cover includes “From The Motion Picture Robin Hood Prince of Thieves” (with the movie’s name much bigger than anything else on the cover) but it isn’t included in the release title
  • Eye of the Tiger by Survivor: front cover includes “The Theme From Rocky III” but it isn’t included in the release title
  • I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston: front cover includes “From the Original Soundtrack Album The Bodyguard” in small text across the bottom but it isn’t included in the release title
  • Stayin’ Alive by Bee Gees: front cover includes “From The Album Saturday Night Fever” but it isn’t included in the release title

In fact, among the singles with movie titles on their front cover that I looked at, the only one that included the movie name in MB was Take My Breath Away (Love Theme From “Top Gun”) by Berlin. In that case, the front cover looks like it may actually be saying that “Love Theme” is part of the title, since it also includes separate “From the Original Soundtrack of the Paramount Motion Picture TOP GUN” text across the bottom. The back cover repeats the “Love Theme” text (and then seems to include the tracklist of the full album, probably to try to trick customers into thinking that they’ll get all those other songs too). :face_with_monocle:

So I think it’d also be defensible to drop the movie text from the Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Leona Lewis release titles. In the first two cases, the cover includes the song title but not the parenthetical bit, making me think it’s just there for marketing and SEO. For the Leona Lewis song, the cover looks like it’s from a full soundtrack album (which hasn’t been released yet?) with the “One Step Closer” title and credits hastily added across the bottom. The “Theme Song” text doesn’t appear on the cover.

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That makes sense, I personally find these titles very ugly, but I thought that they were essential pieces of information to have, but it seems like not. If even the physical singles don’t include those I don’t see why digital releases should.

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related thread about soundtrack albums while I’m here

I personally feel like this would be a subtitle, similar to the consensus in the above-linked thread. so for example, Hold My Hand: Music From the Motion Picture “Top Gun: Maverick” or One Step Closer: Theme Song From the Apple Original Series “Jane”. I think those examples given by @derat need to be corrected.

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I generally agree with @derat

The recording - put the bracketed film details into the disambig. That Recording will likely be shared with the album too. Really it is called just the name. That bracketed addition is added by the shop to literally tell you what it is. It’s the shop’s disambig.

Spotify track list \ Release name, I can’t comment. To me this is a mess that needs to be suppressed, but others will add what they see for a Digital Release even if it breaks guidelines. Artist intent was the short name, shop is just adding context for sales.

I also tend to agree that those with URL’s pointing into Albums are just picking a single track from an album to sell on its own. It is just being promoted separately as that is the best selling track. Was not “artist intent” to sell that track as a single. Don’t think that should be listed as a single.

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I mean, there’s already a relationship linking them to the actual soundtracks. I feel like this type of information is just that, a way for the label (and film studio) to promote the movie, it isn’t the actual title of a release or a track. Doubt most of the involved artists would consider it so.

This has always been the key for me when dealing with such cases. Like the “bonus track” and similar examples on the linked style guide page, I consider such parentheticals as additional non-title information, since they’re not part of the main title, nor ETI intended to distinguish a track or release from another. I also always think back to this release, which is a compilation of an artist’s music, and lists all the song’s original sources in parentheses (as can be seen in the scans).

Soundtrack albums, however, can have multiple releases with the same main title (i.e. “Movie Name”) but differing subtitles for disambiguation (e.g. “Music From and Inspired by…”, “The Original Score”, “The Soundtrack”, etc.), in which cases the information isn’t superfluous and should be retained.

Soundtrack singles—well, the fact that they mention the name of the originating soundtrack album or media is usually just synergistic marketing as far as I’m concerned (like most singles mention the albums they were taken from), and not part of the title.

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I always include the ETI as it’s on the titles. I don’t think anything like this should be removed if it’s on all releases. ETI, is extra title information. If (from the movie “movie name”) is on it. IMO, it should stay as this is literally ETI.

Update: I’d like to see this put in the guidelines if this truly is what is decided is best. Add it to the bonus track, etc. If the majority wants all those removed, so be it.

Update again: So, if it appears to be a part of the title, like “Love theme from movie”, it should stay, but if it’s just (from movie), maybe it shouldn’t and be moved to disambiguation? This would be ok. I too hate when you see things like “Song (ETI) (from Movie)”.

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I’ve been removing these everytime I see them on a release but there are special cases where I’ve kept them, like this one. Not only she already has a song called Lilith (this is basically a remix of the song made for the game), but “Diablo IV Anthem” also sounds very similar to “Theme From”.

Also would like to add that the classic Diana Ross song is literally called “Theme From Mahogany”, with “Do You Know Where You’re Going To” as a sub-title.

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I also dont see the ETI as part of the song title, and therefore prefer not to have this in my music library.

However, with this thinking, I’m also in conflict with why we’d want to them make an exception simply because the original release include it in the tracklist. I get that we’re duplicating it from the track listing, and that’s the purpose of MusicBrainz, but we dont do the same for instances where a release lists a song (which features a guest artist) as “Song title (feat. guest artist name)”. This is see as the same thing, the ETI isn’t part of the track title, so we move this ETI into the relevant field (artist).