I’m going to italicize my attempt at using MusicBrainz technical terms below:
We’re talking about hidden secret audio on named tracks on a particular medium
(At least, I think I have that terminology right)
Basically, when you read the back of the CD you see that track 10 is named “Song A” but when you listen to track 10 you hear Song A followed by silence followed by Song B.
I would argue that the artist has titled the track “Song A” and he intended that to be the title for the track on the medium that is the CD.
I see from the graphic below that there’s only one recording allowed per track, which is why I think the recording should include both names through the track should appear as the artist named it on the medium
Well, this is not really a hidden track, at least in the sense that “track” is normally used in MusicBrainz.
The track is clearly listed and titled on the back cover as “11. Yellow Light”. According to the general “as printed” rule, we should thus title track 11 as “Yellow Light”.
However, this track actually contains recordings of two different works: Yellow Light and Sinking Man. So the question is whether we should deviate from “as printed” and include extra information not present on the cover art in the track title.
Yeah, exactly. This usage of the term track is an exception, slightly different from the usage of the term elsewhere in the system.
Of course it’s fine to have such exceptions, but I think the documentation needs to mention the exception more clearly and more often, even if it’s repeating itself. The page for split title guidelines and artist intent should give nods to the exception, acknowledging that yes, in this case the artist’s title for a track is overridden as “track” applies to each song in the track.
Personally, I think it would make more sense to be consistent with the term track and recognize artist intent by using some other mechanism to acknowledge the second song on the track. The recording relationship @derobert mentioned might be plenty, and it’s what I’ve done for albums I’ve entered before.
I’m not sure where in the style guidelines it says to add a title that isn’t printed in the track list — AFAIK, we follow the printed track list unless a style guideline says otherwise. The guidelines tell you how to handle a track with multiple songs (separate with a slash), but that’s (as shown in the example) where the printed track listing shows all the songs.
And even if there were a guideline, the artist intent principle would seem to override (presumably, the artist wished to surprise you with an unexpected song). Unless someone wants to argue it’s a printing error.
disclaimer: I principally edit classical, where this insanity is not permitted; the only insanity permitted in classical CD publishing is the belief that you can somehow put food on the table by selling classical CDs…
Ha, well this is getting deep into weeds of textual analysis, but @jesus2099 has the clearest reference in his link to hidden tracks above: “A hidden track can mean: […] one or more songs that follow another song on the same track, usually after a longer period of silence, but are not listed on the sleeve.”
I also see hints from other pages such as titles which mentions: “a track includes two or more songs” as an occasion for the title to be split. It doesn’t flat out say this should override the artist’s title, but I thin it suggests it.
@jesus2099’s reference shows to me that this is an exceptional use of terms. It refers to a track inside a track, which I don’t think is an intuitive way of doing it.
Again, if it’s open to discussion I personally would say that’s a hidden song, not a hidden track, and follow artist intent for the track name. Either way, there is room for more clarity in the documentation.
The titles page was the one I mentioned—and note the example there has cover art specifying all the songs going in to that title with slashes. So the example doesn’t override artist intent. Not to mention the style guidelines explicitly tell you that artist intent overrides the style guidelines, so finding implied exceptions is probably wrong.
Now, personally, I see a much stronger argument for normalizing the recording title. If for no other reason than having an complete description of it makes it easier to maintain the database. (No, don’t ask me to find any support for that in the style guidelines either…)
Not sure what to make of the glossary, with its disclaimer up top that it’s in serious need of cleanup.
Exactly, hidden track and secret track are frequent terms outside of MB.
It is what I meant and also the guideline I linked.
Same MB track: Named piece, silence, uncredited piece.
This uncredited piece is the hidden/secret track (not CD nor MB track, just inaccurate common language).
I realized there’s one thing I’m unclear on: if you know the title of a hidden track, do you use square braces or not? For instance, here: https://beta.musicbrainz.org/edit/65101184
As per Style / Unknown and untitled / Special purpose track title, [] should only be used for special purpose track titles. If the official name of a recording/track is known, that should be used rather than [untitled] or [unknown]. If no official name is used but there is a recognised unofficial name, then you can use [Unofficial Title], but an official title shouldn’t have square brackets. (Unless they’re part of the official title…)
“[untitled]” is specifically for Works/Tracks/Recordings that are known to not have a title. Ie., the artist has said that “This song does not have a title” or similar.
“[unknown]” is where you don’t know the title (or maybe even whether it has one!). This is, by far, the more common scenario. If you don’t see a title, that doesn’t mean the thing doesn’t have a title… the title is unknown. Which is MusicBrainz is denoted by using the title “[unknown]”. (“[unknown]” entities may later get renamed to “[untitled]” once it is known that they don’t have a title, but an “[untitled]” entity should never get renamed to “[unknown]”, unless it was just named wrongly to begin with.)
It’s just that if the track is unnamed on the release it would make sense to me to indicate that we’ve inferred the track title from some source other than the release itself.
I’d personally probably just put it in an edit note in this case, but it might also be useful to have an annotation saying something like “Track 55 is a “hidden” track that doesn’t have a title on the cover or in the booklet. Title is known due to …”.
I’m coming into this discussion late in the game, but my thought is that with hidden CD tracks, we should name them:
[hidden]
and then if the name becomes known, we update the track name to:
[hidden] track name
Here is a good example:
has a track 5 on it that has been named Love Song because the name became known later under another release for another album (as I recall). However, the jewel case contained no documentation about any track #5. I proposed updating to:
Love Song (Untitled)
But, was informed by @Rogee about how Untitled has a special meaning to MusicBrainz. Okay, I get that and I’m good with that. But, I still remember listening to this CD when it first came out and getting surprised by track #5. That is the usual response for any hidden track and I think we really should try to help those that find this album on Musicbrainz to know of the artists intention to surprise the listener. I think the solution of using a [hidden] tag as the default prepended value for the track name helps to do that. Any thoughts from folks?
If you know the name of the track, then you can name it. Stick a note in the annotation to explain the source of the name. I also add notes about the gap size too.
Well, I’m thinking about those that use Musicbrainz to update their music files with ID3 tags from this online catalog. They won’t see the annotations in their libraries. They will just see a track number and a name for it. I’m looking for a way to capture the intention of the artist when they released the CD. If you look back at my last post, I’m suggesting this format:
[hidden] track name
It let’s folks know when they are looking in their libraries on whatever music management software they are using (e.g. iTunes, Plex, whatever) that the artist intended this track to be a surprise. It gives back some of that feeling one had when hearing the CD for the first time. It also allows a way to provide more accuracy about the album in total. One can still add annotations when adding or updating the track to the Musicbrainz database, but that is more of a historical note for those perusing the Musicbrainz database, not for those listening to the music via their favorite app.
Here is an example of an edit I’ve done to an album that uses this format, so you can see what it looks like:
