I want to enter a cassette as a release, this one On The Radio At South-end-on-Sea | Matmos | TIMESUCK, and the cassette is only labeled “Side A” and “Side B” with no other titles. There are no releases on digital or any other format I can refer to, and the booklet doesn’t help either. So can I use those as titles, or go with [untitled]? A quick search shows that “Side A” has been used as a title hundreds if not thousands of times, but just because everyone does it doesn’t make it right!
If we are taking what is written on the release literally maybe those are the titles. Or you could argue those are simply instructions on what side to insert in your cassette player, not artistic intent. The same would apply to vinyl too… MB is inconsistent, as is Discogs, and so am I since I have done it both ways already! I think “Side A” is more convenient for tagging my files, but I wonder what the consensus is.
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I don’t personally see an issue either way, but if you don’t go with the side letters, it would likely be [unknown], not [untitled]. the track(s) on each side may have titles, and they’re just not printed anywhere. you can then disambiguate each recording as say, (On The Radio At Southend-on-Sea, Side A) or something similar
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I went with Side A/B. I’m confident the tracks do not have other titles; the recordings were edited from an improvised radio broadcast, and as Matmos said in a FAQ on their website they do not always like to name their improvised works:
Naming improvisations after the fact frequently leads to cod-mystical titles like “Cosmic Meditation on Change” or tediously hermetic titles such as “The Sandwich I Ate This Morning on 12th Street at 10 am” so why bother really?
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The release tracks can be called Side A and Side B.
But the recordings maybe should be called “On The Radio At South-end-on-Sea, Part 1” and 2, or “On The Radio At South-end-on-Sea, Side A” and B
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