221bbs and I are discussing whether phrases like “Original Broadway Cast Recording” belong in the title of a cast recording of a musical.
I think this information should appear in the disambiguation for the release group, and not in the title itself. Here are some examples of releases where the phrase is not included in the title even though it appears on the cover:
Hamilton: 2eece058-39a8-4dd7-af54-b94ae39ec7fa
Beautiful: d24c93a9-1a72-4b7f-986f-f69d824178ab
School of Rock: 39dceead-acc4-438c-830e-2b0174e2d05e
Avenue Q: 29aed286-78f4-4b96-b689-765f46d02e8a
Kinky Boots: e1ba3c76-7b32-40a2-8fbf-56b985518556
Waitress: e35ba12f-59fc-4ee4-9033-9feca3621665
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: c16dfb92-ecea-44fe-8e5e-7dd92c31b552
Mamma Mia!: 89a2d71e-11fc-3247-9375-4a65cd69ed90
Beauty and the Beast: fbc792b3-aee1-4e32-99a0-d715fbbad959
42nd Street: a07118e2-1bef-43e2-8c1c-cb3b669cda34
Fiddler on the Roof: f1640d7b-e320-4a20-bbb4-11e778bccee5
Hello, Dolly!: 26178fec-f08c-431b-bf40-332774137c39
Mary Poppins: d3577544-e7e8-405a-befb-afeda50c9a24
Man of La Mancha: 762a0095-6345-45b4-b7eb-5c2a7ca49b6e
Monty Python’s Spamalot: 59666b97-9c9f-4ba1-9a1b-dd9971d39824
The official MusicBrainz style guidelines point to Allegro as a “correct” example (see the “disambiguation” section). Even though the phrase “Sung by Members of the Original Cast” appears on the cover, it does not appear in the title of the release or the release group. The style guidelines say this is correct, so I think that logic should apply to other releases as well.
221bbs disagrees, and has blocked several of my edits:
“Original Broadway Cast Recording” is an important part of the title. The people who sang in a musical is just as important as the title itself, especially if there are multiple cast recordings. Why would you remove it or not include it if it’s on the release itself?
It seems to me that the official style guidelines disagree. Am I wrong here?
Your approach seems consistent with the guidelines and the example Allegro.
I would like to see “Allegro: Original Broadway cast” or some such, entered as an alias for the release.
edit: While I agree with the application of the guidelines, I would appreciate a statement from experienced users about the intent of the guidelines.
As a sometimes reader of old books, titles that stretch on for a paragraph don’t phase me at all.
Somewhat related, what about “Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” or “Music From the Original TV Series”? While my feel would be that it’s not part of the title either – and instead mainly present to distinguish the soundtrack from its visual source – most examples in style guideline show that the release groups include that label as a subtitle (except for the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, where only the translated versons do). Confusing things, though, is that the releases within those groups seem to have a roughly-equal split between including and dropping the subtitle. Which one is generally prefered?
“Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” or “Music From the Original TV Series” still need to go somewhere.
From the point of view of the ‘Releasers’ these (like “Original Broadway Cast”) are usually disambiguation.
If we can accept the concept of the ‘Releasers’ then MB ought to be treating them as disambiguation.
However MB should try hard not to fit square pegs into round holes.
With some releases the above phrases will be part of the (pretitle or) title (or :subtitle) & with others not.
when “Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” is before the main title (eg. across the top of the cover) it could be regarded as a pretitle (ie. part of MB’s title, perhaps with an undocumented subtitle style colon after it?) or directly part of the title or (perhaps more likely) a subtitle to follow the main title (eg. smaller or different font) which either way invariably means a plethora of aliases is required.