#musicbrainz

Hi everyone ! Is there any actual guidelines for jazz quartets, quintets and etc. ? It's currently a mess if you look for Miles Davis for example: https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=miles+davi...

RYM has a quite comprehensive system where all the albums appear on the same page but with name variations : https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/miles-davis

But on MB it's so hard to keep track of the recordings. Wouldn't it be possible to merge all of them and have particular relationships on album pages and special 'Artist as credited' ?

Given two albums, "Foobar" and "Foobar (acoustics)", where the latter contains acoustic versions of some tracks from the former, are these a part of the same release group?

srxl : theoretically, it should be in two different RGs, the same as instrumental versions

Thought so - just wanted to make sure

when the content is different (as in no tracks are the same), it's another RG

this album also had a deluxe version, so i wasn't sure if it was a similar case

Does the deluxe version have both versions together on one release?

The deluxe version has all tracks from the initial album release + 3 new releases and some remixes of the other tracks

then it should be with the initial album RG !

as it is just an "improvement" of the original version

yep, the deluxe version is in the same group already :)

Perfect !

but the acoustic version should be separate, correct?

If it is sold separately and not part of the deluxe, yes.

which it is, so separate RG it is

@cheezmo

any idea for the question I asked previously ?

(sorry for the savage ping ahah)

No problem. I'm not really a Jazz expert so all I can really do is agree with you it looks like a mess ;-)

Isn’t the Deluxe version just a compilation? If yes, it would qualify as a separate RG.

@yvanza Not a compilation of previously released material, the original album plus extra bonus tracks.

Recordings can already be listed as tracks with different titles and artist credits for different releases.

Mapache_del_Rato: on which basis does RYM group all those releases? While I agree MB should have better way to display variants, I'm not sure how it should be done. All those musical collaborations are around Miles Davis, so perhaps we should have a relationships to denote this (is there one? if not, ...). Did you create a related ticket already?

May be that's something that should be discussed on forums

zas : on the basis that every album by Miles Davis should be on one page I think. "Miles Davis Quintet" exists but is only a display name with the relationships of every musician who collaborated to the album. This way you can have a clear and understandable DB policy with centralized data

I didn't create a ticket yet, just wanted to discuss it with you first :)

Re: Miles Davis see https://musicbrainz.org/edit/77850144

thanks chaban for references

Mapache_del_Rato: you may want to vote for https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-10868

MBS-10868: Consolidated views of artist + associated "eponymous" groups

Thanks for the link chaban !

It's indeed definitely similar.

Miles Davis was never alone on his albums. On "Bitches Brew", an album under just "Miles Davis", there is Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, etc.

The only difference between "Bitches Brew" and let's say "Miles Smiles" is the name on the cover (Miles Davis Quintet on the latter). But it still is a Miles Davis record that should appear on the same page somehow.

While "A person can't have members", a release can. And I don't see what data would we lose while the clarity of Miles Davis discography would be cleary improved. Or am I not seing something ?

"Yngwie J. Malmsteen’s Rising Force" is not really a band in the typical sense. It has always been a backing band for Yngwie and you can see on the relationships page that it's incredibly messy.

Wouldn't we greatly benefit to have specific relationships on releases' page instead of having a separate "band" page ? Not to mention how it messes up softwares and databases that depend on MB

Consolidation is cool but it's not the real solution imho

But nothing stops you already now from looking at all releases / recordings Miles Davis is linked to, right?

Whoever the official artist name on the cover is

Or am I missing something?

(other than people sometimes not bothering to enter that data, but then people need to get educated about entering it)

@reosa

oops

reosarevok : how without opening 6 or 7 different pages and comparing them ?

Same for Yngwie Malmsteen, "Rising Force" and "Marching Out", two of his most famous albums, don't appear on his page. This is so confusing for new users as well as databse management

reosarevok : I strongly feel that your link is proving my point. How is that list clear and intelligible ?

There is no way today on MB to see Miles Davis' discography as we can see every artist's discography

How much more clear could it be than "here's a list of every place Miles Davis played and what and when if we know it"?

6 pages of recordings are so unclear, it's a nightmare to browse

I mean, artist names on covers are and have always been bullshit

But if we have them, we should follow them

Otherwise you might as well just get rid of the concept of a release artist and only follow the relationships

This : https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/miles-davis

Showing releases from groups with member relationships is a really good idea in general (even if just for some relationships)

Mapache_del_Rato: well, that's claiming obviously absurd stuff (Miles Davis isn't also known as "Miles Davis and His Orchestra" and that's disregarding the value of the orchestra completely), but leaving that asid

*aside

I am not saying we should not follow names on covers. But we should also make them intelligible for database purposes. How can someone understand Miles Davis' discography by clicking on several pages and comparing them manually ?

Well, we can do what the ticket suggests and make a second layer on top of it that combines eponymous stuff

As a visualization aide

But I understand you don't think that's enough

From the looks of it RYM treats the group names as simple aliases, which sort of ends up devaluing the other members of the groups

How else do you do it, without completely ignoring the fact that "Miles Davis Quintet" implies a very different thing that "The Great Miles Davis" as a release credit? (which you lose if both are just linked as credits for Miles Davis)

The issue with member relationships that change a lot being hard to understand/visually confusing should ideally be solved with a feature that generates a visual overview of members over time

"Miles Davis Quintet" and "Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force" are not classic bands but backing bands with constant line up evolutions. Considering them as bands may be logical but it's messing discographies at a grotesque level

Wikipedia has nice graphics for music groups with changing members

elomatreb[m]: that'd be neat, but probably doesn't help with this issue :)

I do still want it tho

elomatreb[m] : "members" (it's musicians who sometimes worked on a single album) are always credited on albums' pages

Mapache_del_Rato: the same can be said of Nine Inch Nails. The only difference is that the artists here decided to be inconsistent

you can definitely do that on MB already though

And have some albums under their name and others not

One must assume there's a reason they didn't put all out under their name only

It doesn't override the cover-derived release artist credit though

s

eh

Sometimes deciding to credit collaborators enough to say it's a quintet, sometimes not

The appropriate personnel for each record should in any case be linked at the release level, so the info should be there :)

All a credit does is say "this is the credit"

We could find out later that Miles Davis didn't even play on one album and were just sipping some drink while a session musician did all the work, and the credit would still be Miles Davis if that's on the cover :)

And that combined with having the releases from eponymous groups displayed on the individuals overview page should be basically equivalent to what RYM does

reosarevok : if you have an albul under Miles Davis with "Miles Davis Quintet" as credited artist and relationships to every musician who played and collaborated on the album, wouldn't it be enough ?

I mean, Quintet is only a "marketing" or "typical" term. On other albums with only Miles Davis on the cover, there is always other musicians and sometimes really famous (Chick Corea for one)

That said, if a site like SC decides to allow users to group several MB entities for a shared discography, I don't think that'd be problematic at all :) The point of open data is letting others use it

(SC?)

IIRC Mapache_del_Rato works for SensCritique? But maybe I misremember

ah, ok. I was thinking Soundcloud, which would have surprised me a lot

Mapache_del_Rato: sure, but there's probably a reason they chose to market some as quintet albums and some not :)

I doubt they just flipped a coin

The difference with NIN is that it's not an eponymous band. It's a distinct project where you can see the intention of Trent Reznor. It's not "Trent Reznor's industrial project" haha

Sure, but let's be honest, the only reason the NIN Ghosts album is under NIN but some of Reznor's soundtrack work is not is because they slapped different names on the cover as well

It's basically the same group of people working on very similar music

how dare these musicians not nicely conform into our database schemas

reosarevok : yes absolutely, you are not misremembering! The thing is we don't really want to let users transform the data that exists on MB. We believe that we can be mutually beneficial and that MB's data should be imported as it is. Plus, I'm indeed working with SC but I am also saying that as a long-time MB user.