[ ] Simultaneous first solo and collab appearance

The concrete entity about which this question arises is this:

[www.discogs.com] https://www.discogs.com/Various-Davy-Steele-Steele-The-Show/release/16262572

We have a compilation which contains what may be the first recorded output of "Kathy Stewart".

She appears on two tracks on here as a solo artist: "Kathy Stewart", and on two tracks as collaborations: "Kathy Stewart (and) Patsy Seddon" and "Jamie Steele, Siobhan Miller, Kathy Stewart, Sally Barker, Patsy Seddon" (the exact rendition of these are the subject of ongoing research).

Now, can we presume that because the tracks by "Kathy Stewart" do *not* technically appear *before* the tracks by the collaboration, said collab can be treated as a "collab with connectivity"?

This may be the only place on which Kathy Stewart appears connectably, so allowing collab with connectivity may well be her only path to the DB.

It's not perfectly analogous, but I think that the way that we handled The Million Dollar Bashers on [www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/soundtrack/im-not-there favors your proposal. I believe we have another example that is more on point. I'll look for it.

Thank you, as I hoped -- I can barge ahead and get those entries in, then. (Although not for a bit, I have day job stuff to do.)

Turns out that the 5-way collab may well also be a band, as Jamie Steele looks like not having solo himself. So the question was moot.

We've treated simultaneous solo the same as prior solo from what I recall, with collabs ruled out before because of it.

Perhaps we ought to revisit that. It's a pretty arbitrary choice one way or the other, and IMO it's better to err on the side of including an artist than not. If the only way we can link someone in is by a collab that appears on the same collection as the first solo, it would be a shame to have to not include them Just Because the rules say so.

I don't think it's arbitrary. There's good reason for the rule to put it that way. If you have a compilation of a bunch of solo artist tracks where they happen to get together for collab tracks as well, it leans away from an intention to form a bunch of bands. They're most likely doing an impromptu thing and not commencing the formation of several different permutations of Simon & Garfunkel-like bands.

The point of the rule is to distinguish bands from non-connective collabs as simply as possible. Not to be super generous and inclusive. It'd be nice if the band tree had multiple types of links so we could browse the more inclusive version too though.

Doesn't Rule 6 require "prior" solo material to exclude a collaboration? Simultaneous is not prior so don't the rules allow this as they currently stand?

There are quite a lot of holes in the rules due to the wording. At one point I worked on identifying them with the idea to fix them sometime.

"The point of the rule is to distinguish bands from non-connective collabs as simply as possible. Not to be super generous and inclusive."

You wrote them, of course. /s

Huh? No, I'm just giving the point as I understood it, ie. Simon & Garfunkel is a band, Lou Reed & Metallica is not, etc. Easy peasy.

I'm late to this party but it's an entirely arbitrary split in any case. Its application isn't but it's just a choice and its effects are arbitrary.

Artist A and Artist B get together after short solo careers and record ten albums together exclusively. Not a band on this site.

Four players record things in separate studios for a "Tribute to" album. They never meet. They don't even know who else is on the track because they're just phoning it in for a few $. All four have long solo careers. The drummer has always recorded as 'Frank Drummer' but goes jokingly as 'Francis D. Rummer' here and the track is credited to the string of all their names. The participants don't even know or care if the thing gets released. They never meet. That's a band on this site.

I don't have a proposal or desire for change other than not to sweat it too much. It's an imperfect data set and this site brings sense to most of it.

I'll accept that things can get quirky and warped, but I still don't like the word 'arbitrary' here. The effect is that we have an excellent balance midway between:

a.) the B2B tree being tightened into a thicket of every bizarre and unexpected collab (instead of just some of them)

or b.) a bunch more music scenes/cliques being unconnectable because the only links into B2B we found were collaborations rather than actual bands


Once the new version of B2B is up and running, I still think there are some ways to address the problem. Eg. if site visitors can tick a box or hit a switch to include non-connective collabs when mapping a link between two bands or looking at a band's family tree.