Recording titles vs release tracklists

MusicBrainz Style
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Hi all,

At its heart this is a really basic question about the degree of normalization expected for recording titles, but it’s probably clearest with some (trivial) examples, how I’d like to handle them, and then why I think I’m going to be told I’m wrong. :slight_smile:

I’m not aiming to be argumentative, just seeking the consensus view and happy to fall in line.

Often we find some trivial variation in the way a work is titled across releases. To give a specific example I’ve been looking at of late, Fairport have a track “The Journeyman’s Grace”, that initially appeared on a studio album. Since then, it’s cropped up on numerous releases, often live, with or without the definite article. I can actually see the “has/doesn’t have a definite article” being a super-common example of what I call “trivial” variations above.

To put a bit more detail behind my “trivial” classification above: it has no semantic relevance. Somebody wouldn’t be listening to a live release and saying, “oh, they’re performing The Journeyman’s Grace tonight, that’s the version with the extra verse”.

I’m not sure if it’s relevant, but some of these releases may be official and some may be bootlegs: beyond that, some may be issued on the band’s own label and some may be licensed and issued without any artistic oversight.

My preferred approach to this has been:

  • Release tracklist: as it appears on the release in question. As per error correction, I would fix errors if it were to be credited as “The Juorneymans Grass”, but in particular “Journeyman’s Grace” would stand as is.
  • Recording: I would like to use the “official” title here, which would most often be the way it was credited on the first release.

By adopting this approach, it also nudges people towards adding a disambiguation instead, which does differentiate recordings (“live, YYYY-MM-DD: Yourtown, Yourcountry”).

The recordings also sort properly, and it’s easy to get an overview of different versions of the same work.

The counterarguments seem to be:

  • “Recording name and release tracklist being different seems wrong”. It seems like decoupling these gives us the advantages mentioned above, and we already accept variation there when a track appears on multiple releases.
  • “This is what Work is for”. This seems more valid to me, although it entails creating a work where one doesn’t exist and doesn’t solve the sorting problem, or promote accurate disambiguation.

One further example to keep things interesting: Pearl Jam have been issuing official bootlegs of shows for decades now. The track “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” is often credited as “Small Town”. However, I have boots where that is the case and Eddie actually introduces it with something like:

“This is the song with the longest title in the Pearl Jam catalog, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town…”

OK, first person to weigh in with, “stop over-complicating things, recording titles should exactly match what’s printed on the release” gets the prize.

Thanks!

Jack.

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As someone who also edits lots of live, I generally agree. Especially on the correction of typos. Track name should still stay close to the intent of the person who made that Release though.

Personally if I am naming the Recording of “Small Town” then I’d likely leave it as Small Town as written on the Release. Usually focus on the most common way that recording is named, or the first historically (of that version of the recording) if a few variations have appeared from live bootlegs.

I would not complain if I saw the full name for the recording. Though others may do as you are drifting from guidelines.

The point is that MusicBrainz usually focuses on Artist Intent.

Side tangent about comments - if you don’t have this script, you probably want it. GitHub - murdos/musicbrainz-userscripts: Collection of userscripts for MusicBrainz, by various authors It lets you put in all those disambig comments to a live release in a few clicks.

Oh - and thank you for linking up Works. Always good to hear of editors who do that.

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Thanks Ivan, helpful as always. Typos are the easy one, I (think!) we can all agree there. What about the dumb example at the beginning of the post? Suppose we have “The Journeyman’s Grace” on the initial/earliest album release. Then we have a live album that is put out with limited involvement from the band that drops the definite article.

It’s hard to argue artistic intent one way or the other here, although I notice you say “intent of the person who made that release”, which is slightly different. I find it a little irksome when wading through lists of recordings to have recordings for the same work dotted around rather than close together, but it can be somewhat ameliorated by using filter and then (as we discussed) creating a work to bind the disparate groups together.

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I can’t see anyone being too upset if you set the Recording Name as the “correct” name. If you had the recording sitting on its own on a tape it is what you would call it - “The Journeyman’s Grace”

Track list I’d leave the “The” off of the name if they seem to copy the same style of no “The”. I’d put the apostrophe’s back in if they’re missing though.

What I meant by the intent of the person making the release - it is their CD, so respect their track listing intent (and their ETI). But the Recording is from the artist so it is fair play to correct that to be clearer as to what the track is name.

Notice what happens when you have a track on a CD that is a (single version). In the track list that is (ETI) as part of the Track name. With the recording the name is just the Recording with (single version) going into the disambiguation. The Recording gets the name of the actual music, not blindly following the Track name as on the CD.

I try to apply common sense and what’s important for the music. Sometimes this bends guidelines so I do kinda expect to be shot down by an English Teacher here. :grin:

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Ah, cool, that confirms my approach. Actually, it seems like you might be saying a bit more, though, with the (single version) example… something I’ve wondered about but avoided. Next silly example:

My Cool Track (some dumb remix)

I’ve tended to leave these as they are on the recording, but do occasionally wonder about moving (some dumb remix) to the disambiguation. I think there’s a guideline somewhere though that stipulated doing that only for live recordings…

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That stays as part of the recording name - (Some Dumb remix) is a different mix and generally stays as part of the recording name as ETI that was always there. It is solidly part of the Recording name.

The (single version) dropping to disambig is mainly due to a Single that has been released with a Track called “My Cool Track”. And an album also having a (variation of a) track called “My Cool Track”. So we need disambig to tell these apart. They both share the same name, but sound different.

Whereas “My Cool Track (Some Dumb remix)” has always been called that name in full in the track list…

It is back to “What was this first called?”

I should also add it is really common to see (7" single version), (12" single version) and (album version) staying as ETI on many recordings and not being demoted to disambig. Sometimes it can just vary as to how many releases there are using that Work name. Different people follow variations of the guidelines - they are guides, not laws.

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It’s about these edits.

For me editing recording title differently than 100% track titles is a pity.

Editing recording titles is also a loss of time.
Especially when it’s for deviating from tracks.

I think recording titles should be computed, like their durations, from track data:

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There are no edits.

I can’t work out how that would work. Editing a Recording title is optional so I don’t see how it is a loss of time when editing. It only needs adjusting when something is clearly wrong.

Allowing an algorithm to set it based on an average will mean something that has been renamed on many compilations will dominate the original artists name. But it is now too late at night here to make any sense of this or add examples.

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I would love such a thing! :star_struck:
But I can’t vote for the ticket in the current version:

I fully agree! Thus it can’t be the average title of all track names. Only those from the year of the first release should be used. And it has to be editable (and afterwards remain fixed) in case a different title is better (more common).

I suspect that actually to determine the best recording title completely automatically, it would probably need AI support. :slight_smile:

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one thing to note, if this change is made (which I’m currently against), it’ll break a few style guidelines, namely the mashup guideline:

If a recording is a mash-up of two (or more) recordings the artist should be set to the mash-up artist. Put any “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.

back on topic, I see no particular issue with standardizing recording titles, but my preferred solution would be to link them all to the same work (with it’s title standardized, of course). either way, the track list should be as it appears on the release, with error correction

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It was difficult on smartphone but now I have fixed the URL. :sweat_smile:

For me “standard” recording title is the one in line with tracklists it appears on, not the work title.
You can always see the “canonical” title in said work, anyway.

I did that already.
But it’s not a prerequisite, it’s just better.

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Having worked with a bunch of bootlegs, as well as even more “grey area” releases (like European releases of older recordings that are still under US copyright), I don’t think we need to be overly deferential to the packagers of those releases. They are notoriously sloppy and have nothing to do with actual artist intent. It makes no sense to assume that a misspelling is a typo to be corrected, but a dropped “The” elsewhere on the same release is a carefully considered decision to be preserved.

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I can think of a few cases…

Meat Loaf’s “A Time for Heroes” is routinely included on VA releases as “Heroes”:

Hawkwind are sometimes too stoned to remember their song titles:

Usually no-one manages to record any Blues standard under the same name twice…

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Naturally, original official singles and albums will always have more priority among all the track titles.

The aim of automatic recording titles, like for their durations, is to save editor and voter time.

Of course, the algorithm can then be improved at any time, when we find more smart criteria, easier than mentally or batch editing millions of recordings.

The important titles are always the track titles and the work titles.
Recordings are groups of tracks.