[x] Split albums

When entering a split album into the tree, do all bands with tracks on the album need to be put into the tree? I am trying to do a complete discography for Nightiwsh, and they have not one but two split singles in their history, each of which is shared with two other bands. One of these split singles isn't too bad, but the other includes a band that I *might* be able to link into the tree if I'm willing to trace through about 20 links of black metal bands, all of whose members have one-word stage names as their only aliases. This is just painful to contemplate, so I'm considering trying to submit the album with two of the three bands on it and simply not put the other band in the tree at all. I don't know how splits work in the database, so let me know.

Actually, your task is a lot easier than you think. We treat split releases almost the same way we treat compilations. All you need to list is the band you're adding, its lineup, the year, and the name of the split. There's no need to go the extra mile of getting all the other bands into the tree too because for that particular entry, all we're interested in is band #1.

There certainly are a few split releases and compilations in the tree now for which we do have multiple bands (just search the tree for "The Fall Of Richmond" or "Flex Your Head"), but it's not necessary to get the info for anything more than the one band you're focusing on.

The only real difference is with the title. For compilations, we always add "comp." at the end of the title to denote the release as a compilation. For split releases of two bands, we'll list the title as one of these:

(1) the overall title of the release (e.g., "The Fall Of Richmond")

(2) the title of the band's portion of the split release (e.g., Loose Change's "Stick Around" is the same split release as AFI's "Dork")

(3) the name of the other band on the split, if neither (1) nor (2) apply (e.g., Alkaline Trio's "Hot Water Music split")

For split releases of 3 bands, I guess we'd follow the same rules, although at some point a multi-band split does seem like a compilation.

To REALLY answer your question though, the database treats each band-album combination separately. In other words, it doesn't know that Artificial Peace: "Flex Your Head comp." is the same album as Red C: "Flex Your Head comp." so there's no need for you to worry about that when submitting. As far as the database is concerned, those are just two completely different albums that happen to have the same title, cover, and release date.

OK, in that case, it would be nice to add some feature such that when looking at one band's part of a split album, you could jump to what other bands played on that split. Perhaps something on the album's page like "This is a split album/compilation. The following other releases in our database also correspond to this album:" followed by a list of linked terms like "Artist - Split Album Name" where each of those two items is a link.

Not a bad idea about the "show all" for splits and comps. It's not quite as easy as it sounds, at least in the case of splits with specific names such as "The Fall Of Richmond." In that case, as Mark pointed out, the system regards the two bands on that split as separate entities that just so happen to have the same title. Sadly you can't use album titles as unique identifiers otherwise it will look like there are 1000 bands all on a compilation named "s/t". I've added it to my To Do list, or more appropriately, Things To Think About.


Kevin

I was assuming that on a split album with a title ("The Fall Of Richmond"), the page-generating code would link you to the specific, appropriate releases for that title.

For example, the code would present something like the following:

Avail - The Fall Of Richmond
Young Pioneers - The Fall Of Richmond

Where the first FOR link would go directly to [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=3029 and the second to [bandtoband.com] http://bandtoband.com/index.php?Page=Search&AlbumId=502

Now, to get this generation to actually happen, you need to note (for each instance of the split album) what the other instances are, rather than having the system "auto-identify" split albums. Perhaps this could be made somewhat easier on the data-entry side by identifying various releases as part of a split exactly once, and having the system insert the appropriate links automatically. But in either case the identification and tagging of splits must be done by hand, and must link directly to album pages, not to a "search by name" page.