Mash-up artists with conjoined names or portmanteaus

Hi all,

I’m not quite sure how to deal with releases like this:

A remix project by Amerigo Gazaway, combining Yasiin Bey and Marvin Gaye tracks. He refers to the album as “Yasiin Gaye”, but each track is also prefixed with "Yasiin Gaye - ", implying that that is also the “artist” to credit for those tracks. (File metadata also has “Yasiin Gaye” as the track artist and “Amerigo Gazaway” as the album artist.)

Style guidelines say:

If a recording is a mash-up of two (or more) recordings the artist should be set to the mash-up artist. Put the two “versus” artist titles into the recording name like so: “Track Title (Artist A vs. Artist B)”.

Note that this only applies to the recording, the associated track(s) should be credited as they appear on the release.

Which seems to indicate that on the release’s track list, those tracks should be credited to “Yasiin Gaye” (though as an alias for Amerigo Gazaway, or as a standalone artist, I’m not sure), but the recordings should be credited to Amerigo Gazaway, and possibly have their titles changed to include a parenthetical “Yasiin Gaye”, or “Yasiin Bey vs. Marvin Gaye” (though it’s never referred to as that).

I guess my main questions are:

  1. Should the “Yasiin Gaye” in the track list appear as an alias for Amerigo Gazaway (which feels a little like abuse of the alias system, and misses linking the original artists) or as a separate artist (possibly with collaboration links to Yasiin Bey, Marvin Gaye, and Amerigo — though this doesn’t sit well with me, since collaboration implies the active participation of all parties).
  2. How do we indicate the mash-up in the recording’s name and credits? If we make “Yasiin Gaye” an alias for Amerigo in the track list, could we not also use that on the recording to communicate the same thing, or should it still just be “Amerigo Gazaway” with “Yasiin Gaye” in the recording name?
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There are already other albums listed in the series: Release “Yasiin Gaye: The Return (Side Two)” by Amerigo Gazaway - MusicBrainz

I would select 1 - this is an alias. Yasiin Gaye is Amerigo Gazaway. He used Samples from the other artists. So “mash-up of” or “sample of” credits could appear on the recordings. Certainly would not put this at any official level of “vs” as that would make it pop-up in Marvin Gaye’s catalogue which would not be correct.

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a great example of this is Dean Gray - MusicBrainz

(I finally found a way to use the board again (sorta) : D)

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I see. So making it an alias of the producer sounds reasonable, since we can link to the original artists via the mash-up or sample relationships. So if we’re doing that, should we also push that same alias (and any associated feature credits) down to the recording level? Or have the recording credited only to Amerigo as the style guide implies?

Following the guideline, the title “Yasiin Gaye” is like a project title. Amerigo did the work, but created it as part of a project titled “Yasiin Gaye”. It seems more logical to me to have Ameigo’s name on the Recording, but I can’t see the problem if that is an alias on the recording.

Also those guidelines don’t too far away from saying the track name can include Yaiin Gaye.

So this track would be “Yasiin Gaye - Inner City Travellin’ Man” by “Ameigo Gazaway” from the album “Yasiin Gaye: The Departure”. https://soulmatesproject.bandcamp.com/track/inner-city-travellin-man

When you look the separate tracks at Bandcamp, that is how they credit it:
image

I suspect that might just be a constraint of the Bandcamp interface more than an indication that it’s part of the track title. As mentioned earlier, the file metadata makes it explicit that “Yasiin Gaye” is the track artist, Amerigo is the album artist, and the name is just “Inner City Travellin’ Man”.

If we were to follow the style guide, the recording name might be “Inner City Travellin’ Man (Yasiin Gaye)”, or “Inner City Travellin’ Man (Yasiin Bey vs. Marvin Gaye)”, presumably with any features also added to the parenthetical…

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FWIW we made Wugazi into a band, it seems?

I can’t see any where he does the “vs” thing on the bandcamp page. The write-ups even make a point to being something new, hence “Yasiin Bey”. Likely helps the copyright too. The first option seems best fit.

I would copy some of the track and album writeups to the annotations to make it clearer what the project is doing, and then use mashup links to link those original artists whose material he has used.

As to Wugazi - I guess I give up as that is different to the style guidelines I thought we were being close to here. Would have seemed an alias worked for Yasiin Gaye due to this being sold on Amerigo’s page and keeps it properly linked to the artist as he is named on his own sales page. Or we just ignore the guidelines and make up a new artist. I am too confused now :crazy_face:

Wugazi appears to be a collaboration between two mash-up artists (and not the artists they’re mashing up — Wu-Tang and Fugazi), so I think it makes sense as a standalone artist which encodes the information about the collaborators.

This kind of stuff is confusing :smiley: I’m not saying the Wugazi way is the right one, just that there’s at least one case of making it into a band. I honestly don’t even know what’s the best way to do this.

In any case: if an artist is created, it should clearly not have the mashed up artists as members. I guess you could argue that this is a different project than the creators’ own music - would we expect to see it in the same discography as their original music? If so, then use an alias, if not, use a separate artist, I’d say.

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12 posts were split to a new topic: Setting recording titles automatically (MBS-4252)

So to answer my first question, it sounds like if it’s an officially sanctioned mash-up, then the original artists should be credited (directly, via aliases, or as a collaborative artist as appropriate), but if it’s an unsanctioned mash-up, then the alias should link to the creator of the mash-up.

Are we happy with that?

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This is only one guy, so less band to be made here. :slight_smile: Hence alias seems neater. I would also expect to see this under Amerigo as he is the one producing it and selling it on his page as his work. If he did lots of work under this name then I could see more reason for a separate artist as it become more of a “performs as” pseudonym.

Agree. Neither Yasiin Bey nor Marvin Gaye should appear as “artists” on this as their music is just used here without permission to create something new.

Seems sensible. Credit it as it is - he has used samples of other music to create something new. At no stage involving those other artists. All his own work :slight_smile: He has just used Marvin’s voice in the same way he would use a Sax.