Relationships for a radio broadcast

Hi folks,

So, I’ve got a release which was originally two radio broadcasts, in 1969 and 1979 respectively.

This is the release on Bandcamp: The Octet Broadcasts - 1969 and 1979 | Alan Wakeman

The first programme was introduced by Brian Priestley, the second by Charles Fox. But, there does not seem to be an adequate relationship for this. It is not a performance as such, which is what the instruments/vocals relationships imply. I could select spoken vocals but that to my mind is more like, say, someone reading a poem. The actual function is really synonymous with ‘concertmaster’ except it’s not a concert.

Additionally, there does not appear to be any way to express when the programmes were actually broadcast, for they were recorded and broadcast on different days/times.

Am I missing something crucial? Is there something like concertmaster which is more in tune with how radio broadcasts work?

Thanks in advance.

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You have it about right. Spoken Vocals [announcer] is the way you need to tag it. You name the role in the Credited As box.

Recording Date is the only official date you can add. Broadcast date has to stay in an annotation. Shows tend to get re-broadcast a few times, so annotations are good for these details. It also lets you expand as to what the show is.

You can add Place as a Relationship.

Usually you’d also add the show details into the disambiguation \ comment on the recording. Something like live, 1969-11-21: Jazz Workshop, BBC Aeolian Studio 2, London, UK

I have seen some recordings expand that to live, 1969-11-21: BBC Aeolian Studio 2, London, UK; first broadcast 1969-12-08: Jazz Workshop

Though the former is more usual. Annotations are best for exact show details. I would not add recording times into a disambig.

A random Floyd bootleg which follows some of the above: https://musicbrainz.org/release/baec617d-73be-497a-b403-a95e9e0754af

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I second Ivan here


there is also the Broadcast release group type… the related style guidelines seem to be more focused on podcasts than radio, but I think it could apply. if you don’t want to add those, that’s understandable, but it could give you a taggable original release date for those recordings… could even add a relationship that the Bandcamp release includes those two Broadcast release groups.

I don’t know how track lists would work on these theoretical broadcast releases though… could probably just use the track list from Bandcamp, split up accordingly.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really know how Broadcast releases are supposed to work though, so take that with a grain of salt. :wink:

When something comes out on a official release like this that Broadcast type often gets skipped. That tends to be more for when it is being recorded from Radio or Podcast. Notice the above Floyd example is Live Album as that was put out on CDs as an actual album.

Just like a normal album.

The Release in the OP is in the DB https://musicbrainz.org/release/7844b832-cf9d-470a-af30-d3bdf37e727a and looks good so far. Main things I’d dive in to do is add a disambig and Place as I like those details (I edit a lot of Peel sessions and live stuff)

Thanks for the replies.

That being said, I knew nothing of the ‘broadcast type’, but I would be supremely hesitant to select it for this release, given the documentation, as follows:

An episodic release that was originally broadcast via radio, television, or the Internet, including podcasts.

Although this does indeed involve broadcasting, it is more like a broadcast of a previously-recorded concert, with rudimentary commentary. To my mind, the broadcast type implies a more involved rôle for the presenter, with a considerable amount of commentary/interview, something which we don’t have here. Similarly, the key thing is that this isn’t an episodic release, well, it was originally an appearance on the radio programme in question, Jazz Workshop, but it’s not as if we are adding a given programme from Jazz Workshop as part of a collection of Jazz Workshop programmes or Jazz in Britain programmes.

I will follow Ivan’s advice with regards to the broadcast thing. I have set recording disambiguations in the past with the date so I’ll incorporate that here. As above not setting the ‘broadcast’ type, though.

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