K-drama OST [answered]

First of all, my definitions of OST and soundtracks are as follows:

OST - Music that is used in dramas as background themes, opening/ending credits, and usually released in parts. (usually digital-only releases as well)
Soundtrack - Music that is used in movies as background themes, opening/ending credits, and usually released all at once. (digital/physical releases)

So now the major question - how does one deal with an OST? Specifically, I’m working my way through all of BTOB, their group releases, the subunit releases, and their solo releases… and with several strong vocalists, they’re on a lot of OSTs. Since most K-drama OSTs are released as digital singles in parts and not as a full soundtrack release, what is the best way to deal with it?

Example: Moonshine OST part 7 with corresponding Wikipedia entry.

Should I just create it as a new release and ignore that it’s part of a larger… group? of songs, or should I create a series as the drama title, set the sorting to manual, and then add the parts into it (since there are different vocalists/groups for each song), using the part number as the sorting number and as part of the title? How have others been doing OSTs for K-dramas?

And as a tangent - how do people deal with game/movie soundtracks where a song can be performed in multiple languages, but the official release is only in the ‘main’ language? Yet another example: FF14’s OST of Shadowbringers is only officially released on digital media in Japanese, yet there’s an official Korean version of the song released only on YT? I’m guessing that it’s a standalone recording, but how to deal with the fact that it’s a translation of a theme song from a game soundtrack?

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Looks like a release to me, so yes.

I’d say the answer to this is also yes. This should probably be entered as a release group series titled “꽃 피면 달 생각하고 OST”. Assuming the parts are just numbered sequentially the automatic ordering is probably fine…

Such a translation would be captured via the translated version work-work relationship between the works linked to each recording.

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@draconx took the words right out of my mouth! just wanted to add a couple examples tho~

an example of a series of anime releases:

https://musicbrainz.org/series/0eca7f9c-e8ec-470a-9e9f-b38ff9a6f383

note that if there’s series within the show’s releases, you can create a subseries, like the Character Song releases or Radi-ON! audio drama series in my example.


you can also add all the works to a Soundtrack work, like so:

I believe Soundtrack works are only for music written for the soundtrack, not everything included in the movie/series/video game. for example, Smash Mouth’s “All Star” wouldn’t be included in the Soundtrack work for Shrek.


combining these two, you can also have a series of soundtrack works, like so:

https://musicbrainz.org/series/0671b3f8-6ca8-4ce5-945b-23bde1908287

in this case, I’ve even created a series for the franchise as a whole, since there have been several “generations” of the series, each with their own shows and movies.

note also the difference between a release group series (first example) and a work series (last example).


one last note for those unfamiliar, OST and soundtrack are technically pretty much the same thing. OST stands for Official SoundTrack (or possibly Original SoundTrack?). granted, I haven’t seen OST used much outside of anime/video game soundtracks…

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Thank you both! That makes a lot more sense to me now, I felt like I was spinning in circles with the documentation.

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I hear ya, there’s not much documentation on series yet, I believe we only got them a few years back.

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