As mentioned here, I think it would make more sense to create a new artist for a podcast, similar to a band. Crediting the individual members in the artist field seems like it’s just asking for problems. What if the speakers are not listed on the podcast page, for one?
I was going to start adding a podcast but I’m not sure I want to anymore. Someone already added one episode, seen here, but they do it the way I don’t particularly agree with. It’s only 1 episode, so I wonder if I should do it “their” way, or change it to the way I propose here, if the guidelines aren’t necessarily set in stone yet.
This website podbrainz imports the podcast name as the artist by default. Was this approved or is it technically wrong?
If we can find consensus this really should be added to the guidelines, this is going to come up all the time for podcasts.
For my part, repeating what I said in the thread you linked: I also think it’s weird to add podcasts under individual host artists in cases where they are - in my opinion - more known as a group.
I imagine most users will want to search/browse/tag as the ‘group’. And it matches how the podcasts themselves are credited and released (an important point imo).
When a podcast is released as “[podcast group] with [guest]” it seems like we’re taking a big leap into the weeds by turning the main credit into “[host a], [host b] & [host c] with [guest]” - not to mention if there’s episodes when a host couldn’t make it and then the whole credit changes!
@aerozol It’s going to be tricky trying to standardize this into a guideline. There are some cases where it makes sense and some where it does not. I think the thing to remember here is that podcasts do not per se have “release artists”. Release artist is a concept which is inherent to a traditional release where the artist is listed on the cover (and even there is can be a little shaky, just look as classical releases and audio dramas). As long as we encourage editors to add releases to a series, the release artist can be a little more flexible.
@FeloniousMonk13 Having said that, the cited podcast seems like it has had the same two hosts throughout it’s entire run. I don’t see any reason why it should be a separate artist.
I don’t listen to a ton of podcasts, but I’m pretty sure in Spotify that is exactly how it is. The podcast name is the release artist. Can you show me an example where this isn’t the case?
Because if that’s the rule we’re going with, then there’s no way to automate importing the podcast artist, like with @chaban’s Podbrainz, for example. The hosts are only named in the description on their Spotify page. There is no ‘speaker’ or ‘artist’ field we could scrape to get that data automatically.
As I mentioned in the OP, when you listen to a band like Led Zeppelin for example, you aren’t listening to Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. You’re listening to Led Zeppelin as a unit. And there are even guest performers all the time, like on The Battle of Evermore, and it’s still Led Zeppelin, so the argument that there are additional speakers doesn’t make sense IMO
Basically repeating what @FeloniousMonk13 said, but what’s the rationale for this? It doesn’t follow how MB credits groups (e.g. bands) nor how the podcast artists credit themselves.
@FeloniousMonk13 These are both credited to the host and not the podcast.
Other times spotify uses the production company as the artist as well…
It’s worth noting that we also do not follow spotify naming conventions for podcasts either.
If you are interested in using something like Podbrainz, I would suggest https://yambs.erat.org/
It allows you to manually set the artists for the feed you are importing.
I think your point makes sense for some podcasts and not for others. Remember, podcast releases overlap with lots of other types of releases. For examples, live music performance podcasts are generally credited to the performer and audio drama podcasts follow the audio drama naming conventions of using the primary writer. These compromises are by no means perfect but that’s just inherent to the limitations of a “release artist.”
@aerozol Are you thinking we should have a separate artist for every podcast or just certain podcasts groups? And how are you thinking these should apply to broadcast releases more broadly?
@FeloniousMonk13 if just occurred to me that you might be referring to this credit on the episode page –
I don’t think it needs to be so complicated - just something like:
“If a podcast is consistently credited to a ‘group’ of hosts, credit the group as the artist and link the hosts as relationships.”
I think that accurately mirrors how MB credits bands/music, artist intent, user expectation and gives the usual place to store URLs for social media, streaming, websites etc, which more popular podcast ‘groups’ usually have.
Note that your examples are more complicated (and they should indeed not be credited to a made up ‘group’ that is just the name of the podcast imo), but the given example in this thread is credited as the group and I don’t really see the benefit of splitting these out in MB?
>“If a podcast is consistently credited to a ‘group’ of hosts, credit the group as the artist and link the hosts as relationships.”
Well, yeah, that just about nails it.
The auto-formating on the forum keeps pointing to the episode page when I link to Spotify. So just to be clear, we are sourcing the artist listed on the Spotify show page as the release artist for all releases in that series? I know there are a lot of podcasts which list the production company beneath the title. For example,
Should these releases by credited to a new artist named after the podcast (The Rest is Science), a new artist named after the production company (Goalhanger), the hosts (Hannah Fry & Michael Stevens), or perhaps [no artist] or [unknown] (given that no artist is prominently listed in the release information)?
In regards to the question in OP, I just remembered that the first example in the guideline already uses the host ‘group’ as the release artist but I think it needs to be made clearer.
The broadcast guidelines suggests crediting the production company as an artist on these releases, which seems undesirable. Another issue I have encountered is how to decide the appropriate order for the hosts (who goes first, second & third) on these releases. It would be nice to have a clear guidelines for resolving conflicts like the one cited by the OP, but podcasts credits are so inconsistent across platforms and usually poorly formatted.
Ultimately, my only concern is that these releases should ALWAYS be put into a series rather than just collected as artists releases, that might be a matter of better surfacing the series relationship when adding releases though.
