Secret Squirrel
Jun 12, 2010, 09:33 AM
I've been thinking some about ways that our current data schema may not be up to the task of handling animation music, and what kind of adjustments we might need to make to accomodate it.
I read an interesting introduction to the music of Space Battleship Yamato on the Star Blazers Official Website. (http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=238) When Yamato came out, the state of "Anime Music" was quite different. It seems that most albums were geared towards children, and contained vocals (OPs, EDs, other stuff), but not BGM. Yamato changed all that because adults wanted to listen to the BGM. This article sheds some light on the origins of the anime music industry, and it has some effects on our cataloging.
1. Multiple releases make large discographies
The Yamato site lists about 50 albums that contain the Yamato OP or ED themes. These are in addition to the dozens of strictly Yamato related albums that they catalog. Depending on whether any of the albums are actually just reprintings of other albums, imagine what the discographies will look like.
We may already have some examples of this on VGMdb. A prime example is the Tokimeki Memorial theme song, which is on a whole bunch of drama and magazine albums. We may have to make some adjustments to the discography controls if this becomes common.
2. Older music marketed to children means stranger enclosures
We're going to see some surprising ways of distributing albums. Here is an album that was included on a cereal box. (http://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/cb.html) The physical format is called Flexi Disc (aka Sonosheet), which I've already added to our media types. It covers some VGM albums too.
I suspect we'll come across some things that stretch our definition of an eligible album.
3. Some albums are reproductions of the audio from the source animation.
The Space Battleship Yamato Complete Collection presents the entire TV series in audio format. I don't know whether this is an exact reproduction, though it is likely. In the days before VCRs, this was the only way to relive the series. Are there a lot of releases like this? Should these be included here? They aren't music (though neither are drama albums.)
I read an interesting introduction to the music of Space Battleship Yamato on the Star Blazers Official Website. (http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=238) When Yamato came out, the state of "Anime Music" was quite different. It seems that most albums were geared towards children, and contained vocals (OPs, EDs, other stuff), but not BGM. Yamato changed all that because adults wanted to listen to the BGM. This article sheds some light on the origins of the anime music industry, and it has some effects on our cataloging.
1. Multiple releases make large discographies
The Yamato site lists about 50 albums that contain the Yamato OP or ED themes. These are in addition to the dozens of strictly Yamato related albums that they catalog. Depending on whether any of the albums are actually just reprintings of other albums, imagine what the discographies will look like.
We may already have some examples of this on VGMdb. A prime example is the Tokimeki Memorial theme song, which is on a whole bunch of drama and magazine albums. We may have to make some adjustments to the discography controls if this becomes common.
2. Older music marketed to children means stranger enclosures
We're going to see some surprising ways of distributing albums. Here is an album that was included on a cereal box. (http://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/cb.html) The physical format is called Flexi Disc (aka Sonosheet), which I've already added to our media types. It covers some VGM albums too.
I suspect we'll come across some things that stretch our definition of an eligible album.
3. Some albums are reproductions of the audio from the source animation.
The Space Battleship Yamato Complete Collection presents the entire TV series in audio format. I don't know whether this is an exact reproduction, though it is likely. In the days before VCRs, this was the only way to relive the series. Are there a lot of releases like this? Should these be included here? They aren't music (though neither are drama albums.)