Recordings and Performers

[jujimufu]

I think it's great that we finally host recordings, although I remember that much of the administrative members were opposed to the idea for a long time due to copyright issues (although the signature thing seems to be taking care of that and any issues that come up with any problematic scores).

A few problems occurred when I tried to create my own performer page.

Firstly, it wouldn't let me create a performer page, as I already have a composer's page and the name would be identical ( Category:Psimikakis-Chalkokondylis,_Nikolaos-Laonikos) (yes, it is a long name). Is it possible to add a suffix to performer's page in brackets, so something like:

Category:Psimikakis-Chalkokondylis,_Nikolaos-Laonikos_(Pianist)

depending on the instrument?

Also, would it be possible to associate a performer's page with a composer's page, both for famous composers (there are some recordings of, e.g., the Brahms cylinder recording, Debussy recordings, or recordings of Stravinsky, Webern, Berg, Strauss conducting etc) and for living ones (e.g. associating my performer page with my composer page).



The only issue I have with the audio files is that, IMSLP is (perhaps for the moment) a primarily score-oriented website, with audio files being auxiliary. Would it not make sense to have the scores files above the recording files in the work pages instead of the other way around? What's more, scores are a lot more definitive of a "composition" than a recording, so it is only bound that there's always going to be a lot less scores of any given piece than there are recordings of it.

For this reason, I was also thinking what will happen when IMSLP starts receiving tens (if not hundreds) of recordings of really popular pieces (Debussy's arabesque, Bach keyboard pieces, Mozart/Beethoven sonatas etc etc)? Assuming there are 30 recordings of very decent (performance and recording) quality, all of Bach's Aria from the Goldberg Variations. Are they all going to be featured in the main work page of the composition?

Ideally, I think we should have the best-quality performance recordings (as voted by the listeners, or, perhaps, a group of recording moderators) featured in the main work page of the composition, and then have a link to another page linked to the work page, something like http://imslp.org/wiki/Goldberg_Variatio ... Recordings .

What do you think?

[vinteuil]

Hmm...that is unfortunately subjective. However, if we were to do that, the current file ratings would probably work.

[imslp]

My driving theory behind recordings is that, yes, there will be many problems (some of which we probably haven't even dreamed of), but we will deal with them when and only when they pop up. The quality/rating problem is a major one, but my inclination is to leave it as is until we get enough recordings (say, 1000 or even 10000) to see whether we need to change anything at all, and if so, what exactly we need to change and how.

Regarding duplicate composer/performer pages, I would prefer to append "(performer)" to the category name instead of using an alternate spelling of your name (which I see you have done). Using alternate spellings can confuse things, whereas there is no confusion if "(performer)" is appended.

[andrewt]

I too vote to have the recordings beneath the scores. I was just on a page (I think it was Bach's Little Preludes and Fugues) where there were about 20 recordings and I had to scroll down to find the score... kind of annoying