I guess. But I’m suggested to only credit the author, which I disagree to. That applying the audiobook concept here to audio dramas is kind-of wrong and we could use some good guidelines about how to have a consistent way to credit people.
I’d suggest that Audio dramas should be credited just like audiobooks, but also add all the “Starring: {x}, {y}, {z}” and add the rest of the performers as relationship.
(Ideally there could be some UI changes to display the difference between cast and production credits but that’s a topic for another thread)
Avamander, I can understand a desire to have the voice actors as the Release Artists.
I see it as unfair that they could be hidden away on the Recording Relationships.
And that they therefore won’t be displayed by some audioplayers.
And that some proportion of newer users will have a more difficult job finding what they are looking for.
And some will not be happy with the tags they get.
And that the Release Artists will not reflect the frontcoverart.
Moderating my disappointment with such a situation is;
A belief that >80% of the benefit to most artists comes from being presented accurately and consistently in the database,
that consistency in the db is a real positive for users,
the strong presence/expectation-by-most-users of the misguided tradition of tieing performances of some types of works to the author/composer.
Could you present a bullet point summary of why your approach is is better?
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The author should absolutely be on the artist credit. Having the performers (at least the main ones printed on the cover) there as well seems reasonable, and also fits with the audiobook style, where both writer and performer(s) are credited.
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When editing always try and keep the two following principals.
- Always try and copy the cover of the release, so if this only has the author and not the actors use this.
- Don’t modify the database to match your style, overwrite it on your side.
Picard is a flexible tagger and has plugins and scripting support.
If you are creative you may be able to use scripting to achieve what you want.
Otherwise you may be able to write a plugin that writes the tags just how you like.
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Thanks everyone. I guess I’ll add the writer as the first person credited even if it exists as a relationship.
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I’ve seen @PatriciaTegtmeier editing a couple German audio dramas.
Examples:
Artist credits include: Author(s) and audio drama adaptor with a German join phrase meaning “adapted from [a novel by]”
I find that approach quite sensible. Release (group) credits could look like this:
[Adaptor(s) adapted from] Author(s) [starring performer(s)]
or
Author(s) [adapted by Adaptor(s)] [starring performer(s)]
Actual join phrases from cover should be preferred.
Only question that remains, what about character names written on cover, include or not?
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The use of join phrases to signify some kind of relationship is quite horrible for machines to parse (also forces duplication, both a relationship and a credit, if people seeing the credits could have any idea who was actually credited), in addition to that it is error-prone for humans to enter. Practically there should probably be a slightly differing artist crediting field for audiobooks and audio dramas that would allow entering artists with proper relationship type. After that it should be up for people to get the relationships they want, be it with writers or without, with artists credited or with artists credited only on the cover, whatever, should be up to people and their software.
In general, machines should not be parsing the credits for information, other than who is credited on the release.
The relationships should have the facts, while the credits are just that: credits.
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Exactly, it shouldn’t be a thing. But current style guide makes it a thing which is horrible from data model standpoint.
Clearly people can’t even figure out what those should be like, there’s basically no proper consistency. Big Finish is literally the biggest and most consistent set of audio drama data in MB right now. In addition to that, I am not going to try and guess how people interpret the style guide, write it down properly and then start objecting to any edits.
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Style guide has very little to do with the relationships. Machines should be reading the relationships, not the credits, to figure out who wrote, who performed, etc.
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If all of them are properly entered, quite a lot didn’t, most likely a lot still doesn’t. In addition to that, there’s no “starring performer” relationship, which makes taking a look at the credits field mandatory if you need order information.
And that’s stupid. The style guide should be the holistic guide of entering data into the database for different types of consumption with very little left for interpretation, not “this is how we’ve done it for a while, this is how it worked for [different thing]”. Based on your “No” vote, you’re also not fine with what the style guide enforces upon audio dramas.
What @Hawke is saying (I believe) is that a machine should not be reading the tag with the artist credit in it, it should be reading the tag with the bare artist information.
For example:
Artist = Jeff Beck feat. Imogen Heap (not so useful for a machine)
Artists = Jeff Beck/Imogen Heap (better)
MusicbrainzArtistID = 14a4bc78-1c2d-4ca7-8d1b-9b58076a2a17/328d146c-79f1-4eb6-9e40-8ee5710c14e5 (best)
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And what I’m trying to say is that both of them are quite useless due to the style guide if there are no relationships (which aren’t always entered due to the style guide not requiring that).
Not everyone has time for that. I add relationships to all the releases I add, and it’s only taken me 10 years to get up to the S’s in my collection.
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We’d need to fix these problems in the style guide, people’s interpretation of it and possibly MusicBrainz editor in order to actually properly enter audio dramas into the database without anyone objecting:
- What are “artists”, “narrators”, “voice actors”, “writers” when speaking about Audio dramas specifically? People here understand all concepts differently.
- What’s the actual ground truth for crediting?
a) Is it the cover art (not everything has that)?
b) Is it the webpage (not everything has that)?
c) Is it the pamphlet (not everything has that), assuming there is a physical release.
Should a pamphlet apply to both the digital and physical release?
Which gets priority, why?
People understand this all differently right now and it should be cleared up. - Could the release (group) editor get two separate fields when entering an audio drama so that the entered credits are clearly either “writer”-people and “voice actor”-people relationships?
- Could the web UI display both “writer”-people and “voice actor”-people relationships with the needed join phrases, so that people can keep their workflow when using MB?
- Could the audio drama style guide be split apart from the audiobook one so that it could be fixed now rather than waiting for more data to fix?
- Some releases have multiple tracklists (BF gives you a release as per-track and as a continuous file if it’s the digital release), is there a nice way to enter those?
I’d love to get this sorted out so the database is more useful for everyone, but that’s impossible without the previously listed things answered/fixed.
Yes. If the people who know stuff about audio dramas put something together, and it’s different enough from the audiobook one, then it can definitely be made into a separate guideline. If it’s often the same but some things are different, then I’d rather have it be one guideline but with very clear indications of when it’s different between the two. I have never listened to either an audiobook nor an audio drama so I’m the worst person ever to work on this guideline though 
That’s unlikely to happen, since our line of thought is “credit is just that, and more detail belongs in relationships” (plus, we haven’t managed to get a different release editor for classical music in like 8 years, and more of us edit that).
You mean you buy one digital release and get two versions? If so, I’d add an extra digital medium for that, but you could debate that more while discussing guideline stuff
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That seems to be the case for the majority of releases they’ve made, yes.
I came here because of this
I wanted to ask here what people think about it. I somehow understand to use a fictional character as an artist… but I’m here because of the Audio drama stuff. First thing I did after that find, I went over to discogs and looked at a cover.
Following the audiobook style the releasing artist should be Elfie Donnelly, but she isn’t even mentioned on the first Benjamin Blümchen RG. I don’t know about you, but for me that’s really strange. Elfie Donnelly isn’t credited with almost anything in the database, except of an annotation and lyrics for a song. That doesn’t make much sense to me. But before I start editing, I would like to hear an opinion or two… what do you think is the best approach here?
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