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  #1  
Old Jul 21, 2020, 07:05 AM
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Viento Viento is offline
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Default [REQUEST] New category: Commercial but not licensed or not official

I have a very interesting talk with Jimby about these albums.

For example, there's a lot of albums that are not considered Fan Arrangements or doujinshin since all of them has commercial license, like Materia Collective or Piano Fan Arrangement albums. It's obvious that those albums have no official relationship with Square Enix, but all of them are marked as "commercial".

For collectors sometimes is not easy to spot this kind of albums from a big list. And please don't get me wrong, I loved these arrangement albums even if they're not official, but it's a matter of categorization.

If I had a choice I would mark all of them as "fan-made" but I know this is not the way this site mark those albums.

Maybe these commercial licenses take profit from other artists works. In fact, one of my videos was muted on Twitch because Final Fantasy VII Prelude (PSX) was in the background since I was in the start screen, and I had a copyright claim because there is a person who made FF7 arrangements very similar to the original.
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Old Jul 21, 2020, 08:09 AM
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Toad King Toad King is offline
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There are already labels for "Arrange" and "Fan Arrange"s. See the Octopath Traveler product page. The official arrange albums don't have the "Fan" part on them.

They aren't colored differently though if that's what you're talking about.

Also, I'm not positive if they all are but at least some of these commercial fan arranges are licensed. They're just not official products from the original publisher/label.
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Old Jul 21, 2020, 08:21 AM
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Viento Viento is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Toad King View Post
There are already labels for "Arrange" and "Fan Arrange"s. See the Octopath Traveler product page. The official arrange albums don't have the "Fan" part on them.

They aren't colored differently though if that's what you're talking about.

Also, I'm not positive if they all are but at least some of these commercial fan arranges are licensed. They're just not official products from the original publisher/label.
The point is that Octopath Traveler Arragement is published by Square Enix by their official arrangers. What I would like to see is a category that allow people to check quickly if an album is official or not or at least licensed by the owner.


For example, I'll take this album:

The Keyblade War by Materia Collective
https://vgmdb.net/album/97366

It's obviously a non related Square Enix album but there's no field that allow me to know if this is an official Square Enix product (or Disney for Kingdom Hearts Music) or not. The only clue someone can have is "Based on Music from Kingdom Hearts" in the notes.

Those albums are different for example that Benyamin Nuss' albums, since he has the SQEX permission. But even I could asume this as non official if in the future a new category is created for those one.
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Old Jul 24, 2020, 11:29 PM
ShinHarmony ShinHarmony is offline
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This has been requested before at least once or twice. I agree, it would be great if you could always see directly on the album page whether it's an official or a fan arrangement.

You actually can see that, but only for albums that have been linked to products, and it's a bit cumbersome. For example, that Keyblade War album you linked to (https://vgmdb.net/album/97366), has been linked to the three Kingdom Hearts products. If you click on one of the products, you will see "The Keyblade War" in the album list, with the text "Fan Arrange" next to it.

It also seems that if the composers on an album page are in blue text, then the they are "Featured On" the album. This seems to mean one of two things:
  1. the album is a fan arrangement
  2. the artist's music wasn't originally composed for the products linked to the album (for example Disney composers on a Kingdom Hearts albums, or classical composers on Final Fantasy II)

So clicking on products or checking if composers are in blue tells you if an album is a fan arrangement or not. But if an album is not linked to products, I don't think there's any way to tell. And I don't think you can filter them out in searches.

Question: is there a reason why we have different classifications for albums VS. albums linked to products?
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