How to credit songwriters who don’t perform their own material?

8 δημοσιεύσεις / 0 νέο

Σάβ, 14/08/2021 - 06:01

Ανώτερο μέλος

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 07.02.2016

Pending moderation

I apologize if this has been asked and answered, but lately I’ve been adding a lot of songs that were written by someone other than the performer, and I’ve been wondering how to credit the songwriter. If the writer Is involved in the production somehow I usually add them as a “featured performer” but what if their only role was writing the lyrics?

It really struck me today as I added a song for Sabah that the actual author of the lyrics, Elias Rahbani, has virtually no presence on the database. I credited him in a comment, but there is nothing to link him to that footnote unless one already knew his role and looked for it.

Finally, what would be the best way to credit lyricists like Ahmad Ramy, Bayram al-Tunsi, and Ma’mun al-Shinawi who wrote classic material for Umm Kulthum but don’t even exist on the website?

Should there be an optional “author” field when entering songs? Or is there already one that I have somehow missed?

Σάβ, 14/08/2021 - 06:21

PhoenixOnFire

Guru

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 27.12.2020

To the best of my knowledge, there is no "author" field at the moment. A usual way people do that now is to add them at the submitter's comments, usually one in each line. Something like "lyricist:..., composer:...., arrangement: ....", etc.

Σάβ, 14/08/2021 - 15:05

altermetax

Συντονιστής

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 04.11.2017

You can always make a collection for the songs written by that particular lyricist and add them to it. This way the collection will group the songs added to it and each song will have a link to the collection.

Κυρ, 15/08/2021 - 14:36

maluca

Συντονιστής / hippie-abraça-árvore

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 30.04.2014

Elias Rabani has a page on lyricstranslate though. You can link him as "related artist", explaining that he's s the songwriter or through featuring artist.
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/elias-rahbani-lyrics.html

Κυρ, 15/08/2021 - 18:09

PhoenixOnFire

Guru

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 27.12.2020

The workarounds suggested are very nice. However, another more straightforward way might be to suggest adding the optional attributes 'songwriter', 'composer', 'arranged by' for a song to [@LT]. I understand these people usually are present (although maybe not credited in some sources) in songs.

Κυρ, 15/08/2021 - 18:43

(Reply to #3)

mikistli

Συντονιστής 🌙✨mikistli

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 31.03.2012

I did something similar, especially for songs written that were never meant to be performed by the author and were instead given away to other artists.

Τετ, 18/08/2021 - 07:12

KitKat1

Ανώτερο μέλος

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 07.02.2016

I do make a point of crediting the songwriters, and I’m glad i haven’t been missing out on some key feature of the website all this time.

But I’m now wonderIng if it might be possible to give the songwriters their own indexed, searchable category equivalent to what exists currently for the performers and song titles. It would certainly be valuable in the Arabic context, where songwriters are often poets who write for many singers, not just Elias Rahbani, but all the lyricists who wrote for Umm Kulthum, Abdel Halim Hafez, Warda, Shadia, etc,

But I get that it would be a lot of work, and probably not that valuable in the mainstream pop world where singer-songwriters are the norm. Maybe someday...

Τετ, 18/08/2021 - 09:35

PhoenixOnFire

Guru

Ημ. Εγγραφής: 27.12.2020

>>But I get that it would be a lot of work

I don't know about how much work it is to add another attribute to a song (for some software could be adding an optional raw and probably fixing some dependencies in a database table, but only LT software developers can tell that).

>>... and probably not that valuable in the mainstream pop world where singer-songwriters are the norm.
I beg to differ. I understand many songs in the mainstream pop nowadays are written by not the singers(e.g. here).

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