Changing qualifiers on Vocaloid songs (Iyowa's) from _(vocaloid) -> _([artist name])

BUR #23475 has been rejected.

I'm proposing a change to how Vocaloid (and other voice synth engine) songs are qualified, choosing instead to use the name of the artist as a qualifier. This would allow someone to search *_([artist name]) and find art for all of that artist's songs collected together. The name of the artist who made the song also serves as a more unique qualifier. This is useful when songs use ambiguous or even identical names, as in the case of +-0 (vocaloid), where 143 songs with the same name were made for a music submission festival.

A counterargument might be that a *_(vocaloid) wildcard search is more useful to have when someone would like to search for song fanart in general, but the tags are capped at 100, and it would also catch unrelated art of characters who use their engine as their qualifier. It also wouldn't catch songs made with other engines, of which there are many, and it's not as if many Vocaloid producers are engine loyalists. In the case of Iyowa, he's used voicebanks from five different engines for his music. I'd like to do this with Iyowa at least, because it would be useful to be able to search for fanart of all of his songs at once.

An alternative to this would be to create umbrella tags for music producers or music projects, of which there are already a few (Inabakumori, Evillious Nendaiki). I submitted this BUR to see if this would be a desirable change to how songs on Danbooru are tagged. If not, an umbrella is fine too.

I also threw in an alias for Golden Number, from its English to Japanese name. I'll re-submit that one independently if this fails, just to fix the name.

I've been contemplating this for a while and came up with the same conclusion as you with making it use the wild card search to group up songs, the only problem with wild card search though is that it searchs based on tag limit, so a member can only search 2 of the songs at once iirc.

It might need a change it how wild card search to fully use this this, and the other issue would be songs that have more than one producer that made a song (songs like Star Night Snow).

Other than that I do support this move to artist rather than engine name.

Related previous topic #21922
The current song/music tagging system has gotten a lot of complains in the past, and I'm all for having a better one, but most attempts at solving it failed because there were just too many things to fix. Sorry for being the party pooper, but if we want to make progress here I hope we can clear out a few things and establish guidelines before further execution.

If we follow this new format of artist qualifier, it can bring many benefits. Ending the fight of songs featuring multiple vocal synthesizers, or songs having multiple official versions featuring different singers. And most importantly, if we apply this to human songs, this will end the complete madness of qualifier inconsistency. This will also make artist wildcarding possible, as many suggested.

BUT what about...
0. Some artists have more than one alias, or has performed both as an solo artist and in a group
1. Songs that are collaborations between multiple producers? (e.g. Star Night Snow as SimpleName mentioned)
2. Songs that are commercially commissioned? (e.g. love live!, #compass, project sekai, magical mirai and countless anime OPEDs)
3. Songs featuring a well-known human singer? (e.g. topic #25915)
4. Old anime songs that are currently gentags? (e.g. don't say "lazy", god knows...)

You're right that all of those issues are big headaches. I do have some ideas, at least.

magcolo said:

[...]

0. Some artists have more than one alias, or has performed both as an solo artist and in a group [...]

PowaPowa-P comes up as an example of someone who's essentially known by two names. Some English-language sites still use PowaPowa-P, while a lot of Japanese sources (official re-uploads by his label, Wikipedia, his Twitter, etc.) use siinamota. My first instinct is to use the most up-to-date name available. Meaning siinamota's songs would have a consistent qualifier, even if some of them were made when he went by a different name. That could cause issues in the future when an artist decides to change their name, but would be better than having tags with inconsistently named qualifiers because an artist changed their name halfway through their career.

At the same time, does that apply to producers like Hachi/Yonezu Kenshi, who marked a separation in his Vocaloid and non-Vocaloid music by starting to use his real name? The answer would probably depend on whether someone wanted to see Kick Back art alongside Matryoshka art when looking up *_(yonezu_kenshi). I personally wouldn't, and think that it would be beneficial to have a Vocaloid/non-Vocaloid split. So except in those cases, I would rather we use their most recent name.

As for solo vs. group projects, it'd make sense to qualify solo work with the solo artist and group work with the group. But do you have any examples that would make qualifying like this difficult? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

1. Songs that are collaborations between multiple producers? (e.g. Star Night Snow as SimpleName mentioned) [...]

Collaboration songs are also a bit awkward, but have a more immediate solution, which is to include multiple names in the tag. That would allow one to keep the ability to do wildcard searches for music a producer is involved in (ex. star_night_snow_(orangestar/n-buna) would be picked up by both an *orangestar* and *n-buna* search). However, that changes the search and could lead to false positives (there are currently two artist tags with "orangestar" in their names). It is still doable, but awkward. And then if there's fanart for a song with, say, 10 producers on it, that would get messy very quickly.

2. Songs that are commercially commissioned? (e.g. love live!, #compass, project sekai, magical mirai and countless anime OPEDs) [...]

Project Voltage is another example. Do these songs belong to the projects or the producers? I'm unsure whether events like Magical Mirai should count, because I don't think anyone would say Dappou Rock is more of a Magical Mirai song than it is a Neru song. But then there's songs for things like Project Sekai, which are more associated with the game (from what I understand, at least). I see two options, either using the artist name as a qualifier as proposed, or using the project name as a qualifier. It would depend on which is more valuable, being able to group together every song a producer has ever written for anything, or being able to group together image songs for specific copyrights. I would tentatively say the latter is more important and that the project should be used as the qualifier for commercially produced songs. But this requires some more discussion, because it would re-introduce some inconsistency.

3. Songs featuring a well-known human singer? (e.g. topic #25915)
4. Old anime songs that are currently gentags? (e.g. don't say "lazy", god knows...)

Honestly, I don't know what to do about utaite originals and old anime songs. Old anime songs could be qualified with the anime if need be, maybe. Utaite originals are out of my depth, but if I were to compare it to Vocaloid tagging, using the singer as a qualifier would be like making a song tag called "world_is_mine_(hatsune_miku)". Those song tags may also benefit from having artist qualifiers.

I'm not 100% confident in the solutions I did propose, but hopefully changing the qualifier to prioritize the artist in general would bring more positives than the current system.

Hankpropaniac57 said:

PowaPowa-P comes up as an example of someone who's essentially known by two names. Some English-language sites still use PowaPowa-P, while a lot of Japanese sources (official re-uploads by his label, Wikipedia, his Twitter, etc.) use siinamota. My first instinct is to use the most up-to-date name available. Meaning siinamota's songs would have a consistent qualifier, even if some of them were made when he went by a different name. That could cause issues in the future when an artist decides to change their name, but would be better than having tags with inconsistently named qualifiers because an artist changed their name halfway through their career.

At the same time, does that apply to producers like Hachi/Yonezu Kenshi, who marked a separation in his Vocaloid and non-Vocaloid music by starting to use his real name? The answer would probably depend on whether someone wanted to see Kick Back art alongside Matryoshka art when looking up *_(yonezu_kenshi). I personally wouldn't, and think that it would be beneficial to have a Vocaloid/non-Vocaloid split. So except in those cases, I would rather we use their most recent name.

I agree with using the most up-to-date name in general, additionally, many old p-names should be avoided simply because a lot of them were given by fans and not what the artist calls themselves.

Producers that use a different alias after their mainstream debut is also one of my concerns. Yonezu Kenshi being the most prominent one obviously, especially since he basically quit the vocaloid market, but there're others as well. Ones like kemu <-> Horie Shota, Yuukisan <-> Kamiyama Yoh, balloon <-> Suda Keina have the exact same issue. Personally I don't mind seeing works of both aliases under the same search, the more music I've listened and the more I know them, the more I begin to see them as a whole. But I get that some might not feel that, and it's inevitably odd to qualify a vocaloid song with a mainstream alias because of how the terms are used. We would need more opinions on this one.

Hankpropaniac57 said:

As for solo vs. group projects, it'd make sense to qualify solo work with the solo artist and group work with the group. But do you have any examples that would make qualifying like this difficult? I can't think of any off the top of my head.

There're actually a lot, I do get the impression that they're not very known (even when some are very successful), maybe because they're hidden in the credits and not everyone look there. For instance, n-buna -> yorushika, yurry canon -> tsukiyomi, pusu -> tuyu, ayase -> yoasobi etc. There're also Zutomayo, MAISONdes and Sangatsu no Phatasia that don't have the songwriters as direct members but has involved many different ones in their productions. Whether it's a collaborative project or just a commission isn't always clear.

Also I forgot to mention artists who, while having a solo alias, works in affiliation most of the time, but then sometimes goes back to solo mode. Such as Wonopo (Jesus and Minus) or Yamashizuku (Hitoshizuku and Yama). The fact that they share almost all of their accounts under a joint alias strongly ties them together, but there're times where they work alone. How do we handle that?

Hankpropaniac57 said:

Collaboration songs are also a bit awkward, but have a more immediate solution, which is to include multiple names in the tag. That would allow one to keep the ability to do wildcard searches for music a producer is involved in (ex. star_night_snow_(orangestar/n-buna) would be picked up by both an *orangestar* and *n-buna* search). However, that changes the search and could lead to false positives (there are currently two artist tags with "orangestar" in their names). It is still doable, but awkward. And then if there's fanart for a song with, say, 10 producers on it, that would get messy very quickly.

As silly as the idea sounds I was starting to think the same thing, but maybe *_(orangestar)_(n-buna) instead. I can immediately think of 1 songs that's a collaboration between 4 different producers, 1 between 3 producers and 1 utaite, and 1 between 14 utaites... Also more opinions needed.

Hankpropaniac57 said:

Project Voltage is another example. Do these songs belong to the projects or the producers? I'm unsure whether events like Magical Mirai should count, because I don't think anyone would say Dappou Rock is more of a Magical Mirai song than it is a Neru song. But then there's songs for things like Project Sekai, which are more associated with the game (from what I understand, at least). I see two options, either using the artist name as a qualifier as proposed, or using the project name as a qualifier. It would depend on which is more valuable, being able to group together every song a producer has ever written for anything, or being able to group together image songs for specific copyrights. I would tentatively say the latter is more important and that the project should be used as the qualifier for commercially produced songs. But this requires some more discussion, because it would re-introduce some inconsistency.

This sounds simple on paper but isn't always the case as different series operates differently.
Magical Mirai depends on the year, Dappou Rock might not be but 39 music and future eve certainly are. Honestly I'm in favor that we qualify them with the producer anyway, I just wanted to add more variates to the examples.
Stuff like love live! songs are definitely strongly connected to the series as opposed to the producer. But you also get project sekai where, because of the visibility of the producers and how they release their own version's music video, they're not very detached from the producer's personal works. Some might not even know that the song is a commission. The same can be said to a lot of mainstream artists and bands where you can't even recognize a commission until you look in the credits.

Hankpropaniac57 said:

Honestly, I don't know what to do about utaite originals and old anime songs. Old anime songs could be qualified with the anime if need be, maybe. Utaite originals are out of my depth, but if I were to compare it to Vocaloid tagging, using the singer as a qualifier would be like making a song tag called "world_is_mine_(hatsune_miku)". Those song tags may also benefit from having artist qualifiers.

Not just utaites, this also includes mainstream singers, as we do have a little bit of them on the site even though they're obscured. Honestly, if we go with the multiple qualifier plan for collaborations, we might as well do the same with "collaborations" between singers and songwriters. It's better than having to fight for which one to keep, but again faces the same problem for multi-collaborative songs.

I'm in favor that we go completely copytag for songs including old anime openings and idol projects like love live! and idolmaster. Not just for consistency, but that way it's also clearer whether the song has been tagged or which songs are involved by looking at the copyright section without having to hunt for them in the huge gentag section, I've always found that annoying.

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