the painter (the Prince of Wales) is featured prominently on the cover. It’s in foil, so it didn’t scan well (and I haven’t had a chance to take a proper photo of it yet), but I’ve put a cell-phone photo of it below.
That is pretty weird; I’m up to nearly 200 releases in MB so far, and I don’t think any other one has credited anyone except a composer or performer on the cover. I looked at CSG, which says to include the composers and performers from the front cover. It doesn’t mention not including anyone else, other than not to pull names from the back cover, etc. I figured that CSG just didn’t contemplate such a weird release. So I went ahead and included him.
I received a comment from fmera saying that field is only for musical artists. That seems a little weird—everywhere else “artist” seems to be used broadly (and we’re already using it broadly by including composers, who were clearly not recording artists).
If the field is only for musical artists, should probably add a sentence saying so. Or at least change it to “include only”.
I think this should go into a “design/illustration” relationship, because that’s what it is. We don’t put the performing musician (or composer in case of classical) into the artist field because they are on the cover, but primarily because they have the role of being the artist responsible for the music.
We kinda do, given the style guide says “Use only composers and performers who are featured on the front cover (or the spine); don’t add artists from the back cover or the inside of the booklet or other places.”
For anything? For me, the artist credit has always been about who is credited for the music, and I never read the guidelines as “put any name you find on the cover or spine into the artist field”.
Although I’m intrigued to know more about why the painting is on the cover and it’s labelled the royal edition, I don’t think he should be included in the artist credits. If it said “a tribute to band” or “thanks to patron” we wouldn’t include that here.
To me, I think the main source of the problem is that “Artist” is ambiguous. Composers, performers, painters, graphic designers, photographers, mixers, et. al. are all artists, but they are responsible for different parts of a release.
We already see that problem with classical music and the CSG where we emphasize the composer more.
This discussion is really about that same issue
and this is also related to that ambiguity:
To me, the album artist(s) would be the ones most responsible for the music (or sounds) produced.
For this album, I think the Prince of Wales is the primary artist responsible for the sales of the release.
What is wrong with having an illustrator relationship at the release level.
There are 2 real members of the band a musician and an animator with the animator credited in the release with the design/illustrator relationship.
