This question came up again yesterday on our live chat, where @ianfontova wasn’t sure whether to set the “video” flag on a recording link to YouTube which links to an audio-only “video” (where the video content is a static image). My immediate reaction was to say no, but others’ was to say yes, which makes it clear that we don’t really have a good community understanding of what to do in this case and we should have a written guideline.
The current definition of the “video” attribute is: “This attribute indicates that the content is not audio (or text) only, but video.” This doesn’t help us much since clearly the content is technically “video” just by virtue of it being on YouTube, but it’s also not the kind of thing most people would consider “a video”.
My personal feeling is that not setting these as “video” is the best way to mark in a way that is clear to both humans and computers the difference between the following two entries before they even click a link:
And that something being a link to YouTube is in itself enough info for anyone to understand they will be getting a “video” on the formal sense.
On the other hand, proper videos like the second one here should always be their own recording anyway, so it could be argued that the risk of confusion is fairly low.
Finally, there’s the question on where to set the limit - would a video like the first one of these, but where the cover had some sort of old-school animation that makes it move or blink or whatever be considered something different?
I’d love to see some opinions here since I genuinely have no idea what most editors feel about this question!
Yes, that part I think is not controversial - if it’s just the normal release’s audio with a cover image or the like, rather than an actual video, it should be fine to link it to the original recording.
I’d say the videos described above shouldn’t be entered as videos in MusicBrainz so the easiest fix I think would be to better define what a video is in MB terms and rename the term “video” to “Music Video” and put a good description in the style guide of what we want as videos in MB.
A link to a video recording should automatically be a video (as in the first image). IMHO, the two checkboxes are redundant. My argument stands about the ‘Music Video’ thing though. Which would concern the second image I believe.
Yes, the question is the opposite - should a link to a static “video” from a non-video recording be still marked as a video at the link level (even though the recording itself should not be marked as a video).
This comes up a lot in Blu-ray and DVD “music” releases. Most of time there is simply a static frame wit the name of the song or something, sometimes there is minor animation, a screensaver, content related animation, slideshow, or actual video. Clearly as a “music” release and not a “music video” release, we want to have audio only tracks so we can have meaningful recording associations, but there are times when the video content is significant enough that it should be represented.
My approach is to create separate recordings on the medium for the audio and video “streams” if the video stream seems to have enough artistic content to warrant its own representation (not just a slide with the name of the song, but there are gray areas with minor animation).
Some rare tracks can appear on YouTube being played from vinyl. A static image of an album cover. Or maybe that image changes picture book style. Or rolling lyrics. Or a literal video of a vinyl record player playing the music. I’d not call any of these “video” as the images are purely there due to YouTube being a video site.
I call it a “video” when the artist has created images to go with the music.
I put my music on YouTube via DistroKid. It only has a static image of the album cover. I linked those videos in MBz without the video flag; as a performer, I really do not consider those to be “videos,” just another channel to distribute the audio content to a wider audience.
Sometimes there’s a static image of an album’s cover but there’s simulated TV static or some other moving element on loop in the background. Would this be considered a video?
Something like this:
I have always thought it to be noncontroversial that we do not set the video flag if the content is not a ‘music video’.
That a Youtube link points to a Youtube ‘video’ is obvious - whether or not it is an actual music video or just a container for the audio is worth delineating.
^ This is the biggest issue for me. Where is the line? Literally zero change in pixels? Simple animation to a still image? Just text changing? Simple animation and lyrics? Image slide show(can’t remember a specific example for this, but have seen them)? Or those visualizers like winamp had that are animated to the music? And even “music video” isn’t straight forward. Is a performance video(Same song: performance vs full, many songs have performance but not full MVs) a music video? There is endless grey area between still image and full music video.
Personally while it may not be the most correct, I’d almost just say still image is the line, cause at that point it just looks like your music player of choice showing the coverart. And who am I to judge what the artist thinks is good enough to qualify as a music video?
I would not set these as ‘music video’, with my current understanding of MB consensus.
I thought there was already a guideline somewhere that mentioned lyrics videos (two of the examples above) and slideshows not counting… but maybe I’m misremembering, because I can’t find it.
The first example could be artist intent, to be a music video? But FWIW top comments on YouTube include… “I really need an MV for this song. Does anyone else think the same?” “It’s never too late to give this masterpiece a mv” “this song seriously needs a mv.”
another issue to consider is that some audio releases have animated cover art (Apple Music supports these I think? as well as direct .zip downloads from an artists website), so subtle animation videos could be the same as the cover art on streaming services (at least the ones that support it)
I think still image video URL relationships should not have the “video” flag set, but I’m not sure where exactly I’d draw the line between that and true music videos like the second example in the OP
that said, I also wouldn’t be opposed to just removing that flag, implying its value from the recording-level video flag (or even a release-level video flag of some sort), or implying its value based on whether the site is a video streaming site like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, or whatnot (tho in the third option, we would need the video flag checkable for other websites)
Wouldn’t that lose the data the flag is for (…or, that I assume it is for) - then a user/app has no idea if something is an actual music video.
Having it implied from somewhere else is fine imo, assuming that maintains this distinction. But I’m not sure that solves a problem? It seems like we just need clearer guidelines (assuming the flag is indeed for ‘music video’ only)
