RFC: SPAs

[Brian Schweitzer]

Well, there wasn't much response to the original email - http://lists.musicbrainz.org/pipermail/musicbrainz-style/2009-September/008281.html  However, it's been around for a couple of months now, and I've had a few discussions in pm's, hearing from others who have similar ideas.

I'm still not sure just what the best thing to do with Cenaclul Flacăra is, but I think Bogdan has a much better idea of the details on that one than any of the rest of us.  For the rest, the moves, renames, and merges would leave us with essentially the structure I originally described in the email linked above:

"Valid" SPAs:

    * [anonymous] - The artist is unknown and unknowable.
    * [data track] - Rename it to [data], and merge in "Data CD".
    * [dialogue] - For soundtracks, some other valid uses as well.
    * [no artist] - There is no artist.
    * [unknown] - The artist is unknown, but possibly knowable. 
                        Merge in [traditional], Ethnic Music Compilations, Orchestra, and [east african music] for further
                        cleanup (tracks can then individually be moved to [anonymous] on a case by case basis).
    * Various Artists - Do we have documentation anywhere on when VA is valid anywhere outside of the release artist level? (ie
                               tracks, works, RGs, etc?)

Test Artists:
    * MusicBrainz Test Artist
    * MusicBrainz Test Artist (Yet another test artist)

Placeholder Artists (all subsets of [unknown]):
    * [religious music] - merge in [Bysantine chant], [common chant], [gregorian chant], [islamic
                                                chant], [kiev chant], [kiev-pechersk chant], [Sarum chant], [spiritual]
                                                and [znamenny chant]
    * [classical music] - renamed from Classical
    * [musical theater] - merge in Musical and [musical]
    * [soundtrack] - merge in "Soundtrack", "Bollywood", and Kimagure Orange Road.
            * [Disney] - renamed from "Disney", subset placeholder SPA of the [soundtrack] SPA
                              (kept simply due to the number of unknown Disney-specific tracks)
             * [television theme songs] - subset placeholder SPA of the [soundtrack] SPA.  Kept separate
                                                  both because of the number of these tracks, and the higher chances

                                                     of them being identified if kept grouped, rather than all just dumped into [soundtrack].

    * all (or at least most) of the (valid) "collection artists" currently listed on the SPA page.

special "subset" SPAs (to be left alone):
    * [nature sounds] - subset of [no artist]
    * [language instruction] - Renamed from [language courses], subset of [no artist]
    * [news report] - subset of [no artist].

Left untouched, as I'm not sure that moving them would be beneficial...  thoughts?:
    * [Christmas music]
        - could arguably be kept separate, merged into [religious music], or simply merged into [unknown].
         * A merge with [religious music] might dilute [religious music], as not all Christmas music is [religious music].
    * [Church Chimes]
      - one I created; it's a subset of [no artist], but there's possibly rationale for keeping it separate - these 1897-1902 releases are
        recordings of church chimes, released with either "Church Chimes" (most of them) or "Chimes" as the artist on the label.
        (Does that make the chimes enough of an "artist" to keep them separate?  This is somewhat akin to a [nature sounds], but
        here the "artist" is itself the descriptor of the type of sound.

Left untouched because they have a variety of other problematic things to be dealt with:
    * Lectures
    * (Old Time) radio shows

Brian

PS: Here's the complete current SPA list, for any I know of.  Anyone know of any that are missing from this list?
[anonymous]
Bollywood
[Bysantine chant]
Cenaclul Flacăra
[Christmas music]
[Church Chimes]
Classical
[common chant]
Data CD
[data track]
[dialogue]
Disney
[east african music]
Ella Fitzgerald & Chick Webb
Ethnic Music Compilations
[gregorian chant]
[gregorian chant] & Antonio de Cabezón
[gregorian chant] & Francisco Guerrero
[gregorian chant] & Francisco Guerrero & Bricio Gaudi
[gregorian chant] & Philippe Rogier
[islamic chant]
[kiev chant]
[kiev-pechersk chant]
Kimagure Orange Road
[language courses]
Musical
[musical]
MusicBrainz Test Artist
MusicBrainz Test Artist (Yet another test artist)
[nature sounds]
[news report]
[no artist]
Orchestra
[Sarum chant]
Soundtrack
[spiritual]
[television theme songs]
[traditional]
[unknown]
Various Artists
[znamenny chant]

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[Brian Schweitzer]

Left untouched, as I'm not sure that moving them would be beneficial...  thoughts?:
    * [Christmas music]
        - could arguably be kept separate, merged into [religious music], or simply merged into [unknown].
         * A merge with [religious music] might dilute [religious music], as not all Christmas music is [religious music].
    * [Church Chimes]

nikki had a good idea with [Church Chimes]; that it be left alone for now, but post-NGS, it be merged with [no artist], with the AC set to [Church Chimes] for these tracks.  Makes sense to me.  The same might also be extended to those listed as "special "subset" SPAs (to be left alone)" - [nature sounds], [language instruction], and [news report], merging each to [no artist] but retaining the "subsetness" as AC.

Brian

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