A very common compilation name for a band is “The Best of” or “The Very Best of” – to me, these always seemed very clumsy namings, and “The Best of (bandname)” is better, and usually matches what is on the cover anyway.
What is the groupthink opinion on this?
I’m looking specifically at this edit:
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/71243195
The editor says to “see covers” but the cover does say “The Best of Tony Orlando & Dawn”, albeit in two lines and so one could consider the album title as just “The Best Of” and the artist credit separate.
A likewise conversation can be had about “Greatest Hits” – should it be just that, or is “Bandname’s Greatest Hits” a more appropriate album name.
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According to the style guide, “Release and release group titles shouldn’t generally contain performers unless they are clearly part of the title (either the performer includes it when mentioning the album, or the title seems “unfinished” without the performer name).”
It gives the example of Best of (artist) vs “The Best”
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How would you evaluate the edit I linked?
I made a similar comment there and voted no.
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I disagree with the edit. Complete style guideline… Release and release group titles shouldn’t generally contain performers unless they are clearly part of the title (either the performer includes it when mentioning the album, or the title seems “unfinished” without the performer name).
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The Best of Bandname is quite usual, obvious (IMO) and correct.
But Bandname’s Greatest Hits is rare, no?
Did you ever see that on the spine and/or cover of a release?
I think Greatest Hits works well alone.
I mean we should not add that 's to Bandname if not printed.
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Less common than without, but not all that unusual. I generally see the artist named dropped in MusicBrainz even if there is an “'s” on it.
I say that, but of course it’s not the case for the first example I found. Here’s an example where it is dropped, though. Not dropped, not dropped, not dropped, not dropped, not dropped, not dropped… I guess my impression may have been wrong on that point. This one has it on the release group but not most of the releases. Kind of an edge case because the title’s not on the cover. There are some others like that, The Byrds for instance. (Got carried away, having too much fun… and entered this edit.)
I don’t think anyone would argue we should add “'s” if it’s not there (even though we often tend to add it when speaking about a release).
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For the Kenny Rogers one there is explicitly an apostrophe on the album art, and so I’d be inclined to include the artist name in the release title.
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Agreed, since that seems to be the general consensus.
I went ahead and entered it.
How about one like this: Styx Greatest Hits
There’s no apostrophe on the cover or spine, so “Styx’s Greatest Hits” is right out. But should it be “Styx Greatest Hits”? The cover and spine do say that, although most albums include the band name in those places and it’s never included in a proper album title.
Unless there’s a join phrase or the apostrophe, the pattern seems to be to just use “Greatest Hits” in a case like that. (I think it would be the same as “The Best” in the examples.)
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The spine clearly shows more space between Styx and Greatest than between Greatest and Hits.
And the cover has two very different fonts.
And there is no word to link them logically.
I think it’s the classical artist / title case, like @psychoadept says. 
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