Nationality of artists

[albummaster]

Hi Hayden, good spot with the flags. I'll get those updated. Isle of Man sounds a similar situation to the Channel Islands (which are not part of UK) so I'll look at getting it added.

[albummaster]

Just posting back here as looking again at implementing the dual-nationality functionality described earlier in this thread. This is fairly straight forward for 'individuals', but more complicated when it comes to determining the nationality of a band or collaboration. The aim of introducing dual/multi nationalities is to ensure the site provides the maximum utility to end users through higher precision data, but also has to be easy to understand & administer (to prevent edit wars etc).

The nationality of a collaboration on BEA is currently derived from the nationality of the constituent members, but what is tending to happen now is that more artists are being denoted as 'Mixed' than people might otherwise expect to see and this then has an impact on chart country compositions etc e.g. Metallica, formed in America but including a Danish drummer. A lot of people who would expect to see Metallica listed as American because it was founded in America but under BEA rules it's currently listed as Mixed because it was founded by an American (James Hetfield) and a Dane (Lars Ulrich). After the proposed enhancement this particular artist would be listed as American/Danish (rather than Mixed - slightly more accurate - but this still sounds 'wrong' because a lot of people would still consider it an 'American' band - and with the extra precision, the country composition would perhaps end up even more messy than it is now as there would be a lot more nationality pairs (which 'Mixed' currently hides).

Some bands are formed outside of the country that the constituent members are from and the current guidelines exist to reflect the ethnicity of the members rather than where the band was formed (some other sites out there use the country of formation instead of nationality of the members). In a lot of cases, the 'primary' nationality of a band is unclear (if there are several nationalities within a band and the artists have similar roles). Is it even 'fair' to select one nationality as 'primary' in those circumstances? Also consider a band with three/four/five/six members of different nationalities, at what point do we stop caring what nationality the artist/collaboration is? Is 'Mixed' the best option after all for collaborations of more than one nationality, or do we need to change the guidelines so that 'Mixed' is used more sparingly than it is right now (and if so, what change might achieve this effect)?

[Hayden]

Ayy, unlocked

I think it should just be something as simple as

Artist Name: ______
Nationality: ______ & optional: _______
Membership: ______

With no primary/secondary. If one country has slightly more weight than the other (ie Metallica being USA/Denmark), it makes sense to have the biggest representation first, but some artists are very close to 50/50, so I don't think we need to complicate it further. An artist like Genesis Owusu would be Ghana/Australia, and I don't think it matters which order it's in. If anything, alphabetical.

[albummaster]

[Romanelli]

[EyeKanFly]

I'll throw my few cents in here since I probably pay more attention to artists' nationality than most members, and I have been a little confused by the uptick in "Mixed Nationality" I've seen over the past year or so (e.g. Arcade Fire from Canada > mixed, My Bloody Valentine from Irish > mixed).

To start out, I agree completely with Romanelli's comments. Especially the first one that Mixed Nationality should be a last resort.

Most importantly, take my comments with a grain of salt, because as Romanelli mentioned: "Nationalities on BEA are nice...but I don't believe they are necessary. At all. It's a luxury..." HUGELY agree with this; despite my focus on categorizing nationalities, it's for sure a luxury. Anyway, continuing with my thoughts:

1. BEA currently has very clear instructions on how to categorize nationality for classical albums/artists. Thanks very much to AM and whoever else was involved with implementing these rules! I completely agree with the way this is done. Leonard Bernstein conducting the Berlin Philharmonic is considered German despite the American conductor. I think a rule (or set of rules) for setting the nationality of bands and solo artists is a good idea. My only reservation here is whether it would make data moderation harder.

2. If rules for bands/solo artists are to be implemented, I suggest that the nationality of a band should be where the band was founded. So Metallica are from USA, Arcade Fire are from Canada, My Bloody Valentine are from Ireland, Fleetwood Mac are from UK, etc. Obviously this is not always clear, a prime example being the Bee Gees: three brothers who were all born on the Isle of Mann, the eldest began the band in England and then the other brothers joined in Australia. Currently they're categorized as UK nationality, and I think that makes the most sense, but maybe "Mixed Nationality" can be retained for unclear cases.

3. For solo artists, I think it makes the most sense to list the nationality as where they were born. This doesn't always make the most sense for everyone, but it seems like the fairest way to do it. Any other option I can think of (current citizenship, the place of their musical "origin", place where they grew up, what the artist considers to be their own nationality) are much more subjective or subject to change.

4. I think it's probably better if BEA avoids listing multiple nationalities on any artist. Both because it significantly complicates data moderation, and because "nationality" can be subjective. For bands, it's more about the complication e.g. AM's example where there's a band with 5-6 members of different nationalities. For solo artists, Romanelli's John Lennon example is probably the most egregious (and I agree that we're heading in that direction), but consider Tina Turner who renounced her US citizenship in 2013 but hasn't released a (non-compilation) record since way before then; for all intents and purposes I'd consider her to be from the US.



To summarize, I think the rules for classical albums are clear and successful, and similar rules could be adapted for bands and solo artists. That said, obviously classical albums represent a much smaller percentage of AM's database than non-classical albums, so a change in rules may complicate data moderation.


To add an additional wrench to the mix, I have an additional thought which we may or may not want to consider: what about "Various Artists"? In this case it may make sense to have the option to set the nationality per album rather than per artist. Something like The Indestructible Beat Of Soweto by Various Artists would be marked as South Africa, and Nuggets From Nuggets: Choice Artyfacts ...us Artists would be marked as USA. On the other hand, there's some V/A compilations like the soundtracks to Trainspotting or Saturday Night Fever which are truly by various nationalities. Just something to think about but obviously not the focus of this conversation, so I'm sorry for the tangent.
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51 Washington, D.C. albums!

[albummaster]

Thanks Romanelli, 110% appreciate your deep insight and the massive contribution you make on data moderation.

I agree that Mixed should be used more sparingly for individuals, but artists like Rufus Wainwright (and many others) make eliminating the option very difficult unless the site went with the binary option of place of birth (maybe that's a route to consider again for individuals to put this whole issue to bed).

As way of context, nationality was meant to provide a high level compositional analysis of each chart, act as a navigation aid across the site e.g. if you are interested in music from a particular country (not just US/UK/Canada/Australia etc, where this is less useful due to the volume of music from those countries that exists on BEA). Nationality also helps shine a light on 'diversity' in a broader sense and I've previously mentioned it would be useful to extend some of the artist metadata to possibly include things like gender to make the site a bit more inclusive in terms of diversity, and nationality can be seen as just one element of this.

Personally, I feel having new releases on the site is more of a positive than a negative as they keep BEA 'fresher' than it might otherwise be. If the moderation queue is backing up (and that's the main reason for not wanting the albums listed), I'd hate to feel like you have to take this on yourself - I'm sure other people will step in to help do this if the queue is left for long enough.

EyeKanFly, thanks for your detailed thoughts. It was really interesting. Country of formation is analogous to country of birth for individuals so that would be consistent (the Tina Turner example clearly demonstrates some of the current difficulties - the site is tying itself in knots at the moment and using too much energy on this one aspect). As you also say, it's not always clear cut to determine country of formation (particularly in the case of collaborative works where two or more separate artists come together). In regards to VA nationality, there is another suggestion in the works to create a separate VA for each country (and have these as child variations of a parent VA so these can all be combined together). This is another change on the radar that hasn't been implemented yet, but isn't too hard to do.

I guess the main decision is whether BEA should revert to using country of birth and formation instead of nationality for artists and what the impact might be on changing this. What should the updated help text look like? How many artists might this affect, and which ones would be affected? Is it worth changing? Personally, I think the site would be easier to administer if it was changed, but would the site be more/less useful after this change?

[ForegroundNoise]

[albummaster]

Thanks for a great post ForegroundNoise (and for comments on admin pages). I think the idea of using the majority of members might be quite a good compromise (especially in smaller setups) and might yield a better result in the cases where 'Mixed' might otherwise be used (Arcade Fire a case in point). Completely my fault for drafting a set of guidelines that yield unexpected results, but I think it would be more useful if there were less artists listed as 'Mixed' especially in terms of providing aggregate country charts and compositional analysis within charts. I kind of rebutted (to myself) the need for adding dual nationality in a previous post as it doesn't really solve the problem (there will still be cases where this is not enough). Which leaves the problem unsolved without reverting to simplifying/changing the rules so they don't tie us in so many knots (maybe using country of formation and/or majority of members of a single nationality as extra tests in the case where Mixed might otherwise be used).

[Hayden]

Just tossing it out there—

We have the (somewhat new) 'Individual/Collaboration' option (which, I still don't quite understand the point of unfortunately). How about if the artist falls under the 'Collaboration' category, a second nationality becomes available? This new collaboration—

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

Limen by KMRU & Aho Ssan

—by KMRU (Kenya) and Aho Ssan (France) is classified 'mixed' strictly because it's a collaboration, even though both artists are given their nationality on our site when solo.

What if the collaboration option linked each solo artist (i.e. KMRU & Aho Ssan) instead of mixing them into a single entity (KMRU & Aho Ssan), which would then classify the act as Fr/Ke?

If that makes sense.