If some work uses words from another work mainly and only little changes were made, how it should be credited?

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I try to add all Bad Apple covers currently, that are in my playlist and now I’m add Spanish language covers. Many of them use Emmanuel’s translation, but with a little changes in lyrics.

At the beginning I wanted to add the second modified work with “revision of” work-work and “revision by” artist-work relationships, but then I decided to check guidelines and understood it is misusing:

This relationship is used to connect different revisions of a work. The most common case is when an earlier work is edited for a performance some years later.

  • Revisions are usually made only by the creator of the original work. Arrangements, completions, reconstructions or any other similar work by a third person shouldn’t generally be marked with this, but with other appropriate relationships.
  • Do not use another “version of”-relationship at the same time as revision. It is implied that the revised work is based on the previous work.

So I made a new decision: “So if these changes are really small, I can link it to the original work with ‘cover’ tag”. That’s what I did (Imgur).

But then I met Video “Bad Apple !!” by Palmeraniian - MusicBrainz (2020-01-01, YT rec), a new cover, that uses parts of lyrics from Kira0Loka’s version (From YT description: Letra - Utilicé las letras que Kira0Loka tiene en su version para los Versos y el Coro, el resto de las letras las hice yo :o [Lyrics - I used the lyrics that Kira0Loka has in its version for the Verses and the Chorus, the rest of the lyrics were made by me :o]). So now I should add a separate for for Kira0Loka’s version.

  1. Translation by Emmanuel
  2. Based on it, lyrics by Kira0Loka
  3. Based on the work above, lyrics by Palmeraniian

So my question is “How I should add act in every case?”. Which work-work relationship should be used for “Emmanuel’s → Kira0Loka’s version” and “Kira0Loka → Palmeraniian’s version”. Because the second one uses almost full lyrics of the first one so it can be “based on”, but the third uses only some parts of the second, so it can be “quotes lyrics from”. If “quotes lyrics from” option is appropriate, then should I link Palmeraniian’s version with Bad Apple original work as “translated version” as well? Can be used just “version of” in all of them?

After that, which relationships should be used for artists? Because the documentation/guidelines don’t specify the full list of appropriate relationships that can be used. Translated/reconstructed/revised by are not correct one, so what should be used? Because I checked (Imgur) and I already misused “revised by”/“revision of” relationships once.

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I might do “version of” for the first and either “version of” or potentially “based on” for the second connection. “based on” and “quotes lyrics from” both seem more appropriate to me for much bigger changes than this, personally.

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I usually use Quotes relationships if uses less than a verse/chorus (a few lines is pretty typical), otherwise I’ll use a Based on relationship

I personally only split works if I need different work relationships to a specific version, and it looks like this case might be one of those cases

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OK, thanks! What about artist-recording relationship for person who made these little changes? Which one should be used?

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I do the same globally. I saw some discussion, that if some music version doesn’t have other performing, then I should use “cover” attribute instead of adding separate work. The problem of this method are composers (authors of instrumental music) in covers. I can’t credit them, because composer relationship can’t be used with recording and arranger is defined as “This indicates the artist who arranged a tune into a form suitable for performance. “Arrangement” is used as a catch-all term for all processes that turn a composition into a form that can be played by a specific type of ensemble”, so if I understand it correctly, I can’t use this relationship for electronic music and other music that wasn’t written for live performing.

And what do you think about these cases: Song “Bad Apple” - MusicBrainz and Song “Bad Apple” - MusicBrainz ? Based on or Quotes as I did?

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you can have an arranger on electronic music, tho arrangement works are not commonly used for popular music (i.e. not classical or folk)

it’s hard to say without knowing the songs in question, but I’d probably favor Based on (unless it uses less than a verse or chorus from one of them, as mentioned above).

that said, unless they’re credited as such at their sources, I’d probably credit the original songwriters on these works and all the translators (as well as the Dutch lyricist) as translators. not sure how I’d handle Silver tho…

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