Best Ever Albums

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 13:31:54 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/16/2019 17:31

@Romanelli

The main benefit is not finding out whether an individual release you're already interested in is an EP or not, which as you've indicated is not hard. One benefit is seeing the subheading when browsing, and by far the most significant benefit is the sortability that introducing an EP label will allow for down the road.

Re: EP Ideas

Romanelli — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 13:07:49 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 03/16/2019 17:07

baystateoftheart wrote:

Romanelli wrote:

I think, also, how much is an extra field or dropdown or other designation really going to be needed? How ultimately important is a designation that an entry is an EP?

If I see an album on BEA that I might be interested in checking out, the first thing I do is I look at the available information. On BEA and on other sites. I do this to educate myself about the album before I make a plunge. At some point in this process, I will see whether or not it is a full length album. I will know this within the first minute or so of looking into it. The only thing I can think of that a specific EP designation would affect would be how much you would pay for it. And if you pay full album price for something and it arrives and has 4 tracks and runs only 13 minutes, that's your bad for not checking it out first.

How ultimately necessary would this addition be?

It may not be "needed," but it would be useful. It doesn't make sense to push people to other sites in cases when it wouldn't be a big hassle to provide the info here. And people like to know info about music such as whether it's an EP because they're interested as hobbyists, not just because they're looking to make an informed purchasing decision. At this point, most listeners stream anyway.

If you're streaming, then you would find your answer immediately upon going to whatever streaming site you're using (you are not streaming from BEA, so you ARE already going to other sites). And if you're getting your music for free, then cost doesn't matter. It's not pushing people to other sites...what do you do when you want to learn more about an album or an artist you find on BEA? You go to other sites. You go to Wiki or the band's website or other places to learn about the artists, the recording process, the songwriting, because the only details you are going to get here is cover art, release date and track list.

If you're a hobbyist, and you're serious enough about it to need distinction between an EP and an album, and you're NOT doing your research...are you really a serious hobbyist? BEA was not made to be a one stop for all info on an album. I have at least six different sites that I use to check out albums and artists that I might want to listen to...and I use those sites also to get information on data moderation. If you're trying to rely on BEA only to get your info, then you're missing out on a lot of things much more important than "is this an EP?".

As for "not a big hassle"...we are already doing research for full release dates for any album released after 2003 (there are still over 4700 of these backlogged that need to be fixed...not counting the ones we've researched and haven't yet been able to find). We are researching artist country of origin, compilation yes or no, making sure we get the original album art in a size and format that meets site requirements, trying to make sure we get the correct tracklist, making sure that various artist albums and mixtapes also include artist name (without its own field, so no points for the extra work), making sure that featured artists are also part of the track name (again...no points for that), trying to insure that spelling, punctuation and capitalization is done per site guidelines, making sure that the album entered is not a later reissued version with extra tracks, making sure that duplicate albums are flagged, and while newly entered albums are up to date right now, it could grow very quickly to 100 or more waiting to be moderated in just a couple of days.

There are a lot of changes coming up as well, and we don't yet know how many of these will affect data moderation, or how much work site changes will add to that. As someone who does a lot of work on the data mod side, and as a serious collector of albums...an EP flag seems to me to be something that would fall under very low priority.

My opinion,of course.

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 12:32:18 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/16/2019 16:32

Romanelli wrote:

Re: EP Ideas

Romanelli — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 11:34:09 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 03/16/2019 15:34

I think, also, how much is an extra field or dropdown or other designation really going to be needed? How ultimately important is a designation that an entry is an EP?

If I see an album on BEA that I might be interested in checking out, the first thing I do is I look at the available information. On BEA and on other sites. I do this to educate myself about the album before I make a plunge. At some point in this process, I will see whether or not it is a full length album. I will know this within the first minute or so of looking into it. The only thing I can think of that a specific EP designation would affect would be how much you would pay for it. And if you pay full album price for something and it arrives and has 4 tracks and runs only 13 minutes, that's your bad for not checking it out first.

How ultimately necessary would this addition be?

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 10:56:33 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/16/2019 14:56

albummaster wrote:

Agree, 'EP' is quite a subjective label and it's going to lead to the inevitable lively debate about whether certain albums should be classed as EPs or not. Also, somewhat clouding the issue is that we already have on BEA maxi-singles, 12" releases etc which also meet BEA's minimum length requirements. Are we to classify anything that isn't an album as an EP (obviously not); and if not, how deep do we need to go with this (if we did this, how many release types should we be thinking about adding? do we need to support them all? and is there much value in doing all of this given there seems to be limited utility in the extra data?). I'm beginning to sense a can of worms.

Really? I thought all singles were banned/deleted regardless of length.

Alternatively, we could change the dropdown to say something like "special categorizations." The default could be "none" instead of "LP." That would cause less confusion.

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 10:45:47 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/16/2019 14:45

albummaster wrote:

I don't see the harm in adding an option to mark some shorter albums as EPs provided they are above BEA's existing threshold and adhere to your definition of being released/marketed as EPs. Unless I am missing something, I don't think this would affect the operation of the site or significantly increase data admin overhead. (Existing/new albums would default to 'LP' (or album) but any BEA-eligible release meeting the criteria of an EP could be flagged as such).

😁

Re: EP Ideas

albummaster — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 10:20:57 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/16/2019 14:20

Tap wrote:

I mean we should probably address the fact that EP is an arbitrary promotional term, like you havw things like Autechre's EP7, a compilation CD that was released at the same time as the vinyl releases EP7.1 and EP7.2 (see also Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy for a similar scenario), the most significant indicator that something is an EP is from the title or promotion indicating it's an EP.

So I do think it makes sense to just have the standard we have here and leave it at that, because it's a close to meaningless term. But I do think it would help the albumcentric focus of this site to be able to distinguish things as EPs. Because there are EPs on the site now, and if we could call them EPs then we could separate them from the albums. I think you would need to put a lot of work into the rules around them though and factor in titles, category numbers, and other things so I think it'd be fair to wait on it since it's not like the chart is plagued by EPs.

Re: EP Ideas

Tap — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 06:45:18 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 03/16/2019 10:45

I mean we should probably address the fact that EP is an arbitrary promotional term, like you havw things like Autechre's EP7, a compilation CD that was released at the same time as the vinyl releases EP7.1 and EP7.2 (see also Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy for a similar scenario), the most significant indicator that something is an EP is from the title or promotion indicating it's an EP.

So I do think it makes sense to just have the standard we have here and leave it at that, because it's a close to meaningless term. But I do think it would help the albumcentric focus of this site to be able to distinguish things as EPs. Because there are EPs on the site now, and if we could call them EPs then we could separate them from the albums. I think you would need to put a lot of work into the rules around them though and factor in titles, category numbers, and other things so I think it'd be fair to wait on it since it's not like the chart is plagued by EPs.

Re: EP Ideas

albummaster — Sat, 16 Mar 2019 05:11:01 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/16/2019 09:11

Gowi wrote:

with so many albums missing tracklists, having improper years, etc. I really think we should focus on making the album database better instead of adding extended plays outright.

Agree, the focus should always be on improving the quality of the database. If release years (or any other details) are incorrect, they can be reported on individual album pages (this is a continual process). As an aside, only three albums out of over 140,000 are currently missing their track listings.

baystateoftheart wrote:

The division between EPs and albums is incredibly blurry now more than ever, and I think BEA's broad definition of album should include all EPs that are released as standalone, intentional creative works, not just some of them

Right now, as Romanelli has also mentioned. there is an extremely clear boundary of what determines an album. BEA was only ever intended as an album site. The fact that EPs are here at all is because BEA's cut-off of 20 minutes is the minimum cut-off for an album and some longer 'EPs' occasionally fall into this bracket. It is not currently an objective of BEA to include shorter EPs alongside their longer counterparts. To remain an album site, BEA has to have a cut-off somewhere and if we started allowing shorter releases, the site would quickly become flooded with 12" singles etc which also happen to have the same characteristics as most shorter EPs.

baystateoftheart wrote:

Well no, you won't know if what you're looking at on BEA is an EP without crosschecking with another website. And adding the word EP to every title wouldn't allow for sortability in the future. I wasn't suggesting adding a dropdown, just modifying the existing one. "Yes" -> "Compilation." "No" -> "LP." And a new third option called "EP.

Romanelli wrote:

The only change in this that I would be in favor of would be adding (EP) at the end of the album title. This would be easily visible and simple for whoever is doing the data moderating to verify.

The word 'EP' should only appear in the title if it is shown on the artwork. The fact that a release could be flagged as an EP could be used to indicate this anyway (and could also be used for filtering and sorting etc).

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 15:53:05 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/15/2019 19:53

Romanelli wrote:

It's very simple right now.

If it's 20 minutes or more, it's allowed on BEA. Regardless of number of tracks.

If it's 5 tracks or more, it's allowed on BEA. Regardless of total running time.

If it's less than 20 minutes AND less than 5 tracks, it's not allowed on BEA.

If you think you might want to look into an album, you will discover pretty much within the first 2 minutes of checking it out that it either is or is not an EP, without the need for adding a dropdown. (Compilations are a yes or no option.)

The cutoff established by AM for EP's has been pretty fair and easy to follow. And, my opinion, the less additional gadgets added to the data mod process, the better. There are plenty of those to come with updates that are already in the works. EP's, to me, don't seem like something that should be a priority, given that we already have very clear guidelines for them.

The only change in this that I would be in favor of would be adding (EP) at the end of the album title. This would be easily visible and simple for whoever is doing the data moderating to verify.

Re: EP Ideas

Romanelli — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 15:36:54 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 03/15/2019 19:36

It's very simple right now.

If it's 20 minutes or more, it's allowed on BEA. Regardless of number of tracks.

If it's 5 tracks or more, it's allowed on BEA. Regardless of total running time.

If it's less than 20 minutes AND less than 5 tracks, it's not allowed on BEA.

If you think you might want to look into an album, you will discover pretty much within the first 2 minutes of checking it out that it either is or is not an EP, without the need for adding a dropdown. (Compilations are a yes or no option.)

The cutoff established by AM for EP's has been pretty fair and easy to follow. And, my opinion, the less additional gadgets added to the data mod process, the better. There are plenty of those to come with updates that are already in the works. EP's, to me, don't seem like something that should be a priority, given that we already have very clear guidelines for them.

The only change in this that I would be in favor of would be adding (EP) at the end of the album title. This would be easily visible and simple for whoever is doing the data moderating to verify.

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 14:10:55 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/15/2019 18:10

Gowi wrote:

with so many albums missing tracklists, having improper years, etc. I really think we should focus on making the album database better instead of adding extended plays outright.

That's a fair point.

Hearing everyone's feedback and reconsidering the factors at play, I think it makes sense to set aside the question of making more releases BEA-eligible. But it would be useful to have an EP label to apply to those that are already allowed on BEA.

Since according to AM the definition of a compilation needs to be revisited, while we're at it how about changing the yes/no compilation dropdown to a dropdown with three options: LP, EP, and compilation? The definition of an EP being simple: if it's released/marketed as one.

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 14:03:41 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/15/2019 18:03

Tap wrote:

if your suggestion means that this EP consisting mostly of previously released material should be added to this site as a non-compilation album then I think that is evidence of your suggestion needing some work

I am not advocating for anyone adding that release. Under current BEA rules, it could be added to the database as a non-compilation album.

Clearly if the definition of compilation is up for revision (I did not know that when I posted), it would make sense to square that away before addressing issues surrounding EPs. A tag for EPs and an exemption for certain EPs to be added to the site are also two different issues, and I can see how it would be confusing to discuss them together.

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:48:26 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/15/2019 17:48

albummaster wrote:

Hi, thanks for an interesting thread. There's a few issues mentioned here, so just responding chronologically:

Agree that BEA has a few gaps in terms of 'missing' material but this is an album site and the missing material is missing because it does not appear on any albums. There are also many singles or 12" releases that don't qualify for BEA which would add 'richness' (completeness) to the database.

However, the danger of allowing EPs (and other shorter releases) is that it would dilute the core concept of BEA which is specifically about music albums (and is the raison d'etre of BEA and the main point of difference with other sites). If BEA lost that core focus on music albums, what would the site then become? (there are higher level strategic considerations that come into play when thinking about broadening the scope of the site)

babyBlueSedan wrote:

I think one reason why we have the restrictions is to prevent singles from getting added, and I do agree we should not allow those to be added. Was the rule created because users were adding singles, or was it created to prevent that possibility?

The restrictions are in place to keep this site focused on music albums.

I think the compilation guidelines should be more specific and the word 'vast' should be removed to make this less subjective and easier to administer. However, this requires further debate/consideration to ensure this would not introduce any unforeseen issues.

I absolutely agree that this should remain a site for albums, but BEA already defines album broadly enough to include compilations, mixtapes, DJ mixes, and other non-traditional formats, as well as many EPs. The division between EPs and albums is incredibly blurry now more than ever, and I think BEA's broad definition of album should include all EPs that are released as standalone, intentional creative works, not just some of them. The slippery slope to singles always comes up but I don't think that's a risk, considering no one is advocating that and the way I wrote this excludes singles.

Re: EP Ideas

mickilennial — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:25:06 GMT

Author: mickilennial

Posted: 03/15/2019 17:25

with so many albums missing tracklists, having improper years, etc. I really think we should focus on making the album database better instead of adding extended plays outright.

Re: EP Ideas

Tap — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:04:59 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 03/15/2019 17:04

if your suggestion means that this EP consisting mostly of previously released material should be added to this site as a non-compilation album then I think that is evidence of your suggestion needing some work

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:54:28 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/15/2019 16:54

Tap wrote:

but see that's where it gets confusing then because there's a hard 50% thing in your proposal so it wouldn't qualify as an EP, but then it also wouldn't qualify as a compilation because it has too much new material, so it can't be added? I dunno I just think if we're gonna be talking about it lets get into the ones that would give us the most trouble, I think that can help make it clear what the rules should be (and if any accompanying changes to other rules are necessary).

It can already be added to the website because it's long enough. That would not change under what I'm suggesting.

Re: EP Ideas

albummaster — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 05:18:22 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 03/15/2019 09:18

Hi, thanks for an interesting thread. There's a few issues mentioned here, so just responding chronologically:

baystateoftheart wrote:

If a shorter release is clearly and specifically presented/marketed as an EP or as an LP, AND is comprised of more than 50% newly-released recordings that do not appear on any studio LP, it should be permitted in the database. That would add richness to the BEA database without clogging it up with redundant releases.

Agree that BEA has a few gaps in terms of 'missing' material but this is an album site and the missing material is missing because it does not appear on any albums. There are also many singles or 12" releases that don't qualify for BEA which would add 'richness' (completeness) to the database.

However, the danger of allowing EPs (and other shorter releases) is that it would dilute the core concept of BEA which is specifically about music albums (and is the raison d'etre of BEA and the main point of difference with other sites). If BEA lost that core focus on music albums, what would the site then become? (there are higher level strategic considerations that come into play when thinking about broadening the scope of the site)

babyBlueSedan wrote:

The restrictions are in place to keep this site focused on music albums.

baystateoftheart wrote:

The BEA compilation guidelines require "a vast majority of previously released tracks." 4/7 is not vast.

I think the compilation guidelines should be more specific and the word 'vast' should be removed to make this less subjective and easier to administer. However, this requires further debate/consideration to ensure this would not introduce any unforeseen issues.

Re: EP Ideas

Tap — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 02:21:02 GMT

Author: Tap

Posted: 03/15/2019 06:21

but see that's where it gets confusing then because there's a hard 50% thing in your proposal so it wouldn't qualify as an EP, but then it also wouldn't qualify as a compilation because it has too much new material, so it can't be added? I dunno I just think if we're gonna be talking about it lets get into the ones that would give us the most trouble, I think that can help make it clear what the rules should be (and if any accompanying changes to other rules are necessary).

Re: EP Ideas

baystateoftheart — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 02:02:04 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 03/15/2019 06:02

Tap wrote:

https://www.discogs.com/Cex-Role-Playa-12-EP/release/6794 4/7 tracks are from his role model album https://www.discogs.com/Cex-Role-Model/master/110937

Close, but no cigar. The BEA compilation guidelines require "a vast majority of previously released tracks." 4/7 is not vast.