[traditional] composer

Is there guidance on how to use “credited as” for [traditional]? E.g. “Traditional Scottish” if that is the credit or just to omit the [], if the credit is plain “traditional”?

1 Like

I don’t think this has ever been discussed. I have seen several stand-in credits for [traditional] on releases/in databases (e.g. イギリス民曲) but have never used them. The “credited as” capability is relatively new (~3 years), and to my knowledge there hasn’t been much discussion about when it is and isn’t appropriate to use.

Credited as is supposed to show how it’s actually written on the release. So you should probably use it with [traditional] or [unknown]. That’s what I did with https://musicbrainz.org/release/abaf8722-6c85-418c-92a7-99d2c747f234 for example…

3 Likes

I generally just use [traditional] or [anonymous] but actually @derobert has a good point, so I think I’ll follow the release more closely in the future here too :slight_smile:

I generally don’t use ACs for [traditional], if only because traditional Works are more likely to be used across several different artists’ several different releases/performances, and likely to be credited slightly to radically differently each time. And the relationship AC credit is on the Work level, not on the Release level, so the AC used will be the AC used for all Recordings and Releases featuring that Work.

(Of course, if it’s a classical release and the composer is “Traditional Scottish”, then I would use the AC in the track artist.)

Interesting…
I think it is clear that using the AC in the track artist makes sense and this is what has been done here:

In this case the release will be the source of the AC.
The use of AC in the work relationship seems more debatable. I recognise that

but surely the track AC is designed to deal with that. Where the facts are clear, what is wrong with using the relationship AC for the work? Surely better than the bland and uninformative [traditional] - and in any case, subject to the voting procedure.
The list of aliases and ACs for [traditional] (https://musicbrainz.org/artist/9be7f096-97ec-4615-8957-8d40b5dcbc41/aliases) makes interesting :thinking: reading. Why so many aliases which clearly only have meaning in a specific work/release context? Clearly lots of ACs (presumably for track artists); I’m not sure if there is a way of finding where ACs have been used for work relationships.
If the AC is not to be used for the work relationship,then the question occurs, what is it there for?

Merged artists’ names will be kept as aliases of the artist they’re merged into, so that’s the main reason for this :slight_smile:

1 Like