I have an album where the names of featured artists are indicated like this on the backside:
SONGTITLE - FEAT NAME
It’s clear that I move the featured artist to the artists list and use " feat " as the separator. Now I’m wondering if I should add the missing point to designate the abbreviation. I didn’t find any example for this case in the style guidelines. It basically says, use the given separator like “feat.” or “featured”, so I just copied the style from the cover without points. What would you do?
You should add the point behind the “feat”. I remember adding a release like this once. When I didn’t put the point, an experienced MB editor requested I put one. So I guess adding a point is the recommended standard.
Thanks for your answer, using the point makes sense to me, but there are arguments for both versions. On the one hand we’re supposed to copy the spelling from the cover, on the other we should ignore the decisions of the graphic designer and follow artist intention. If I add the point, there appears to be no reason why I shouldn’t add the rest of the letters as well and simply write the full word “featuring”. I have added the points for now until someone convinces me otherwise.
I believe that, at one time, using “feat.” (with the period) was the MusicBrainz standard. I’m not sure whether or not this was an official standard, but as of last year (I think) it has been relaxed and now “feat.”, “feat”, and “featuring” are all acceptable.
In this case, I would have entered them the same way you did, using “feat.” (with the period).
The guidelines say: "You should generally enter the credit as it appears on the release"
The examples suggest that the spelling should be copied one-to-one, although I’m pretty sure the uppercase isn’t supposed to be copied as well. Correcting the case could fall in the same category as adding a missing character. I assumed the omitting of the feat.-points was a decision of the cover designer as well as the all-uppercase letters and not necessarily artist intention, so I’ve fixed the uppercase to sentence case (Italian) and added a point where there was none on the cover. Here is the cover if you want to check it: https://ia801503.us.archive.org/9/items/mbid-6be9525a-e8c6-4e5e-b6f2-bfa6e4417bf5/mbid-6be9525a-e8c6-4e5e-b6f2-bfa6e4417bf5-18855560861.jpg
So since the status is “won’t fix”, the rule is still “copy the spelling of the separator literally from the back cover” (but fix orthography if it’s not artist intention), right?
Yeah. Seems “feat” without the dot is generally considered an incorrect English abbreviation so the dot should be there, but not because of us standardizing
