Re-recorded guitar magazine backing tracks

Hi, I’m curious if other editors have opinions about how this CD should be entered: Edit #113947454 - MusicBrainz

It accompanied the October 2005 issue of Total Guitar magazine, and it apparently contains re-recordings of various songs done by currently-unknown musicians acting on behalf of the magazine rather than by the original artists.

Should the tracks and/or recordings be credited to [unknown] or to the original artists? Both? Someone else (e.g. a new “Total Guitar” entity)?

My hunch is that these should be treated as cover versions, which I’d typically credit only to the artists who performed the cover and then link to the original works as covers.

I noticed that there are a few other issues of the magazine already in the database that credit the release to Various Artists, the tracks and recordings to [no artist], and include the original artist names in the track titles:

Those were both added by the same editor, though.

I haven’t yet found any images of the physical media, so I don’t know how the artists and titles were presented there.

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Stuff like this is all over the place in the database. Certainly should not be credited to the artist. Link to the Work as a cover version.

They are more of an “[unknown]” artist than “[no artist]”. If there was a lot of them I was adding I’d make up an artist like “Total Guitar” and then annotate that artist as to how these are unknown session musicians employed by the magazine. It is a group, an entity, just we don’t know the line-up.

I can’t comment on the track name including the artist. Personal opinion I would say that it should be allowed as that is how the track is listed on the artwork. That is what is being covered. But that breaks a guideline when read literally so it should only be the track name.

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Does it break a guideline? Style / Artist Credits - MusicBrainz says that featured artists shouldn’t be in the title, but this is an “in the style of” case rather than featured artist.

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I don’t know the guidelines word for word. This isn’t a featured artist thing, agree would not fit that guideline. I can’t remember the previous discussion but I’ve “been told” before to not put artists in the track list.

Having the original artist in the tracklist for this kind of cover seems logical to me as that is what is written on the tracklist. It also makes it clear as to which version of a track is being played.