That doesn’t seem to square with what he said earlier in this thread:
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I think you may be missing what @wtfislibrious said in the line before that. He says that reosarevok only said something about works and not about release groups.
Notice the suggestions of Song or Sonata as alternatives to Soundtrack. These are work types, just like soundtrack is also a work type. Therefor he said nothing about release group secondary types.
Still it’s a fair discussion to have. If a song (work) is not a soundtrack (work-type), because it’s only part of a soundtrack, not the entire thing. Then perhaps a single (release type) would also not be a soundtrack (RG secondary type) by the same logic, because the single is only part of the soundtrack not the whole thing.
Perhaps the difference is that in the case of RGs it’s only a secondary type? It doesn’t call the entire thing a soundtrack, it is calling it a single first, soundtrack second. Still I’m not entirely convinced by this logic, because it’s still only part of a soundtrack, not the whole thing. But perhaps I’m missing something.
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Like @dpr , I’d be interested in seeing where the style leader said what @wtfislibrious attributed to him. I haven’t found it.
If that is what was said, it only makes sense in the context of a musical score, like a Star Wars or Harry Potter album. It doesn’t make sense in the case of soundtrack albums that comprise several pop tunes, unless they were all written for the movie (Grease comes to mind).
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I’m forming the opinion that it’s a mistake to call a work a soundtrack. A “soundtrack” is literally “recorded music.” A work is a composition. It might be the basis for a soundtrack, but it isn’t the soundtrack. That’s for the recorded instance of the work that accompanies the movie.
And look at the confusion it’s causing. 
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Have you seen what a soundtrack-type of work looks like? The work in itself is a soundtrack, every song that is part of the soundtrack is a song. There’s not much confusion to be made here.
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There is certainly confusion - I personally removed the “Soundtrack” work type from more than half of all Soundtrack-type Works ever created in MusicBrainz in early 2022 because the usage violated style guidelines. And judging by this graph, someone’s going to need to do it again.
And parts of a soundtrack should not be ordered like in your linked example.
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The work is a composition. Notes on paper. A score. The soundtrack is the recorded performance of that work – the music that accompanies a movie. Applying the word to the composition is only causing confusion.
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If the composition was done with the purpose of creating the soundtrack then the work should be classified as this. Otherwise you can apply the same logic to all other work types as well (“this work is not a song, it is just a composition. It is a song if it gets sung.”)
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I disagree. A song has always been a song, and it has always referred to the written composition, whether it was sung or not. The term “soundtrack” originated as a reference to the “track” on actual film that carried the recorded sound that accompanied the movie. It has never really meant anything else, and we shouldn’t be muddying the waters by misapplying the word.
John Williams didn’t write the soundtrack to Star Wars – he wrote the musical score that was recorded for the soundtrack.
Alex North wrote a musical score with the purpose of creating the soundtrack for the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but it was never used in the movie. So it’s a musical score intended for a movie, but it’s not a soundtrack.
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That sounds like a pure naming / translation thing. So the type probably should be named “film score”.
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The last few months I’ve been working through all the film score composers from A to E (so far) I guess I’ve added more than 50,000 works as a “soundtrack” that I believe were part of a soundtrack and were composed as such. What other meaning should the classification as “soundtrack work” have? Soundtracks are often composed of works composed especially for the soundtrack and third-party works (songs) by prominent artists. This is where I see the necessary differentiation, which of course should not be classified as a “soundtrack”. I fully agree with @outsidecontext here. Since I also plan to work through the film score composers up to Z: Should I create the works that are still to be created as a soundtrack, neutral or as a song???
Per the Style guidelines and the Style Leader, you should be creating Works with no type whatsoever. If you disagree with this, you can join the long line of people who want change.
If it is the prevailing opinion at the moment, I will create the works without type. It’s a real shame that the information that this work was composed especially for a soundtrack is lost. Please let me know if it ever changes.
Renaming the type is certainly what I think is best, but, as “soundtrack” is currently being applied to music for films, TV, games, etc., “film” might be too limiting. “Media score,” perhaps? Otherwise, we’d need more types (film score, TV score, game score, etc.)
I wouldn’t say it’s the prevailing opinion, at least not yet. At the moment, it’s not much more than an idea that I’m putting forward. I’m certainly not trying to lose that information. I just think “soundtrack” is not an accurate name for the type.
Soundtracks are an important Work type as many of us want to know when music was used in a film. I’ve generally tried to followed the pattern @yindesu mentions where there is ONE soundtrack Work per film, and every Work written for that film is the “Part of” that soundtrack Work.
This means one Soundtrack Release of 18 tracks is one Soundtrack Work, and 18 separate works created to line up to the Tracks on the Cd. All “part of” that main work.
I don’t think we need to rename this type as it will cause more confusion that way. Generally you buy a “Soundtrack CD”, so it fits neatly that you then have a “Soundtrack Work” that would align to the release.
I also think a conversation about Works in a thread that started about Release Groups is getting confusing.
In this case I actually would be for keeping the name “soundtrack” for the work. This is commonly understood and fits for all the cases.
I really think “John Williams wrote the soundtrack for Star Wars” is commonly understood. And it is also how essentially all the other work types are being used.
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I don’t think it does. Consider the Alex North music for 2001. The work was created with the intent of being recorded for the soundtrack of the movie, but it was not used for that purpose. So now you have a work that, by your logic, is a soundtrack, but no recording of that work will ever be a soundtrack.
I think the use of the word “soundtrack” in relation to works is exactly what’s causing the confusion that @TheBookkeeper alluded to.
But there is a soundtrack CD for, say, the movie “Stand By Me,” but there wouldn’t be a soundtrack work for it.
Yes, I didn’t anticipate it being a full-blown conversation on its own. Maybe a moderator can break it out to a separate thread.
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I think in a case like this, it does make sense to create a work for the unused soundtrack, as long as it’s disambiguated and annotated. I’ve actually created a soundtrack work for a similar case; the game Fighting is Magic, which was later totally reworked into Them’s Fightin’ Herds
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That’s just a colloquial shorthand, but that doesn’t mean it’s correct. I don’t believe the music industry uses “soundtrack” that way, and I don’t think MB should, either.
I’ve seen a few interviews with John Williams, and he never speaks about writing a “soundtrack.” He writes scores. He calls it “writing the score,” or “film music.” He almost never uses the word “soundtrack,” unless he’s talking about the recording. I think applying the word “soundtrack” to the composed music, rather than the recorded music, is not consistent with the general meaning of the word “soundtrack.”
Wikipedia:
A soundtrack is recorded sound accompanying and synchronised to the images of a book, drama, motion picture, radio program, television program, or video game; colloquially, a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film, video, or television presentation; or the physical area of a film that contains the synchronised recorded sound.
Cutting Room Music (a partnership in the business of composing scores):
We generally associate the term “soundtrack” with the collection of music that is released along with a feature film. The thing is, a commercially released soundtrack album can be anything the studio wants it to be: it could be only the original score, only the licensed songs, or a combination of score and excerpts of dialogue or remixes and tribute versions of the music in the film.
I think, the closer you get to people in the industry, the difference gets more defined, and it becomes clear that they don’t apply to word “soundtrack” to the score. MB should not be muddying that distinction.
Anyway, that’s my position. I don’t object to having some way to identify a work as being written or intended for a movie (or other medium). I just think “soundtrack” is the wrong word. I’ve already repeated myself, and I expect further dialog would just be more repetitive, so I’ll leave it at this, unless something compelling comes up.
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