I’ve read this thread, and generally, I believe that the cover should be the determinant. As noted in this thread, the obi in Japanese releases is usually written in Japanese script, even if the performer is not from Japan, so it’s only something like an ADDITIONAL information for buyers.
Secondly, not all albums have an obi. Actually, before I read this thread, I didn’t know that this piece of paper had a name. Although now I recall that indeed, when I last bought an album shipped from Japan, I had something like that. I kept the obi as a souvenir because it was my favorite band’s album. But it was a special occasaion that I bought a new album. Usually I buy used albums, so I don’t have obis for them, and if I did, I considered them trash and threw them away. Also, on the internet, you’ll rather find information from the cover than from the obi. So a piece of paper that sometimes exists and sometimes doesn’t seems like a poor determinant.
Thirdly, I believe the rules and guidance should be transparent and consistent. Korean artists’ physical album releases are added under their Latin names, which editors argue is written on the album. So why should we treat Korean artists differently from Japanese ones? And how is a new user who listens to artists from both countries supposed to figure this out?
Just to be clear - I much prefer names in the original language. That’s how I tag my files on the computer. But if we have to stick to some accepted convention, so be it. Let’s at least be consistent.
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Each language in MusicBrainz has different Style guidelines. It’s normal that you’d find differences in practice between KR-focused editors and JP-focused editors.
The Japanese guidelines are not controversial among long-tenured editors here and the spirit of the guideline is intended to result in consistency with official discography and record label pages. It also assumes you have some understanding that text titles should differ from graphic design, regardless of Japanese or not.
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This makes a lot of sense in general, but is a bit strange when applied to Japanese music in particular, where we decide that we ignore some stylistic decisions (such as what artist name is printed on the cover) entirely, which we usually would not, but set others in stone even when we would otherwise override them (such as caps and, arguably, punctuation even around ETI always being seen as preservation-worthy).
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Thanks for posting here, @Fujimoto ,
All releases have obi, except if they have a slipcase that replaces this data for some limited editions.
IMO the Japanese release obi often represents the official names and titles for Japanese artists, not for foreign artists.
But the tracklist is not so often printed on it.
all new Japanese releases, yes. I think @Fujimoto is saying they don’t always survive in the secondhand market (tho correct me if I’m wrong)
100% agree with Reo here. looking at this Japanese release, the artist name is in Latin script everywhere on the outside of the release (save for the obi), only using the Japanese script in the booklet for composition credits (see the edit discussion between me and @yindesu here)
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