Re: The Hills are Alive with... (The Great SoundtrackDebate)

Hi -

On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 08:51:50 -0400, "Aaron Cooper" <cooperaa@...> wrote:
> I like performers as artists but as it has been pointed out, it get
> tricky when a large group of people perform a song -- who gets
> credited?  I suppose whoever is printed on the cover, that's who.

Well, taking The Sound of Music (again), front and back covers of the 40th anniversary edition can be found at http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6973973/a/Sound+Of+Music:+40th+Anniversary+Edition.htm with a different front at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sound-Music-40th-Anniversary-Special/dp/B0006OR0VC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/202-2705555-2402214?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1190206769&sr=8-2.  

The front cover at Amazon credits only Rodgers and Hammerstein (the composers) but features a photograph of Julie Andrews.  The cduniverse scan has Robert Wise (the director), Julie Andrews & Christopher Plummer (performers) and Irwin Kostal (conductor) clearly credited.  While R&H don't have the largest credit on the cover, they're credited next to the title which to my eye gives them greater prominence.  Overall, between the two conflicting cover scans, R&H seem to win in terms of prominence on the cover.  

If one is going to attribute the entire album to Andrews and Plummer (who are given co-billing as performers on the cover that includes their names), then that is misleading for many tracks on the album.  In the example here (rear cover scan can be found at the cduniverse link), there are a couple of instrumental or choral tracks, and several that feature neither Andrews or Plummer.  (Lets ignore the interviews in the bonus tracks for the purposes of this discussion.)

To my mind we shouldn't be shoehorning facts into our view of what the Artist is for a given release.  While it may be convenient for some purposes, attributing "Sixteen going on Seventeen" to Andrews and Plummer is simply wrong.  If we do the assignments at track level, then we have to work out who contributes to each track (considerable research) and we'll end up with an unmanageable set of pseudo-ARs to represent all combinations, as you note.  

I'm definitely of the view that composer works here, and that ARs should be representing the more specific performance roles on a track-by-track basis where the information is available.  The release annotation can be used to provide details of the specific version of a release.  No offence, but if someone wants to see performers in their artist tags, can they not setup PicardQt to set the Artist field equal to the Performer field?

Try http://musicbrainz.org/release/e730042f-b50f-4d48-979a-ada82efb9a11.html for an example where the composer is attributed as Artist, but performances are included as ARs.  It isn't perfect, but it is somewhat closer to what I'm describing - there's a little data missing but as far as I can see nothing there is *wrong*.  

Regards,
Barry


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