I would like to propose a style guideline to address whether, when a writing relationship is credited to a group, the relationship should be recorded in MB as pertaining to the group or to its members.

For example, consider the song "Remote Control," which is one of a number of songs on the Hello Nasty album with the credit "written by Beastie Boys." The related work (7256e4f1-776b-3b3e-bc37-8a4cf08ebf29), however, has three separate "writer" relationships: one linked to Adam Horovitz, one linked to Michael Diamond, and one linked to Adam Yauch. (They are, of course, the members of Beastie Boys, although in that capacity they would normally be called Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA.) It is not clear to me whether this should be considered an error—nor, if so, whether the error lies in linking the relationship to the members instead of to the group or in linking it to the members under their personal names instead of their professional monikers.

Adding further confusion, another track ("Intergalactic") is credited on the album as "Written by Beastie Boys/Mario Caldato, Jr.," and the "writer" relationships for that work (485cd051-e19b-3676-9d9e-243fe68e6c4a) are linked to Adam Keefe Horovitz, Adam Nathaniel Yauch, Mario Caldato, Jr., and Michael Diamond: aside from Caldato, those are the same people under different names, listed in a different order.

I propose that relationships in MB should follow the album credits in all cases, not look through a group to its members. In other words, "writer: Beastie Boys" should be considered correct, and anything else, such as "writer: Adam Horovitz, Michael Diamond, Adam Yauch" or "writer: Ad-Rock, Mike D, MCA," or any variant on these, should be considered incorrect.

I note, however, that the ASCAP database lists the individual group members, not the group, as writers. (See https://www.ascap.com/repertory#/ace/search/workID/480295250 and https://www.ascap.com/repertory#/ace/search/workID/390612489.) One might reasonably argue that MB should base its guideline on ASCAP instead of the album credit. I disagree, but I would prioritize consistency over the details of how it is achieved and so if a consensus were to develop around an ASCAP-based guideline rather than an album-credit based guideline, I would still favor that as an improvement over the current situation.

I suppose the issue can arise equally for relationships other than writing credits—e.g., Rolling Stone albums that give a producer credit to "The Glimmer Twins"—but it seems particularly salient when a recognized group is both the artist credited on the recording and the writer credited on the corresponding work. It may be appropriate to consider expanding the guideline to address similar situations more broadly. I think, however, that a project to develop a guideline for writing credits specifically can and should begin now and proceed independently of any broader effort rather than allow such an effort, which would inevitably take more time and involve additional considerations, to delay action on writing credits.

A related but conceptually distinct issue is whether to look through an entity credit when there is evidence that the credit was given as a matter of practice or protocol and not actually earned by the group. This is also unclear. It doesn't arise here—there's plenty of evidence that Ad-Rock, Mike D, and MCA all participated in writing the songs credited to Beastie Boys (at least as a general proposition; I haven't looked at whether that's specifically true for the works I mention above, but let's assume it is). If there were a particular song credited to Beastie Boys even though, say, Mike D didn't participate in writing it, should the "writer" relationship for the corresponding work be attributed in that case to Ad-Rock and MCA instead of to Beastie Boys? I think not; if the guideline is to follow the album credits, as I suggest it should be, then we should be consistent. Any discrepancy between the credit and the actual contributions of the group members can be noted in an annotation.

I would be in favor of including this in the guideline, but if narrowly-scoped proposals are preferred so that each aspect can be considered separately, I would also be happy with a guideline that leaves it open while addressing the easier case where all group members deserve, or it can be assumed that they deserve, to share in the credit).

The final example on the Relationships guideline page, however, seems to suggest, contrary to my proposal, that may be necessary to look through a group credit to the members' individual activities. The example points out that "Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote You Got Me Rocking," and says that both should be credited as writers because "their individual roles are unclear." It suggests, however, that if there were evidence that one of them had written the tune and the other the lyrics, the relationship credits should follow that and credit them separately as "composer" and "lyricist" even though the release gives "writer" credit to both.

I think the open-ended nature of such an inquiry is problematic. Once it becomes necessary to look past the album credits, the question of whether a person has done enough to earn a relationship listing is inevitably open to debate and interpretation. Any hope of consistency, however, would surely require deleting the relationship between John Lennon and "Hey Jude" (eac0d507-46ed-3ed7-80d5-e4ac31719221) and "When I'm Sixty-Four" (0ccca825-3af9-35e8-9378-7d50a28db027), to take two particularly notable examples among many. (I suppose Lennon/McCartney technically isn't a group as such, but it's such an iconic entity for credit purposes that I think you need to consider it as the functional equivalent.)

Indeed, I don't think it's possible to draw a principled distinction between the case implied in the example, in which (say) Richards would be identified as "composer" and Jagger as "lyricist" despite their joint "writer" credit, (ii) a requirement to look through Lennon/McCartney and give Paul credit for Paul's songs and John credit for John's songs, (iii) requiring a purge of all writer and producer credits that studio owners have historically claimed to increase their share in the economics of a record, and (iv) any work-for-hire arrangement under which copyright is claimed ab initio by someone other than the true songwriter. In each case, the same logic implies that the relationship should be credited to the artist that an editor concludes actually performed the function instead of the person who is credited with performing it. That way lies chaos.

I would therefore recommend changing the example in the Relationships guideline to say that either (A) the "writer" relationship is correct because that is how they are credited on the album or (B) since "You Got Me Rocking" has both music and lyrics, the "composer" and "lyricist" relationships should be used in preference to "writer," but Jagger and Richards should both be listed for both relationships because the album credit does not distinguish their roles. This should be true, contrary to the example in the current guideline, even if external evidence were to show that one of them performed one or both of those roles without any participation from the other. In that case, the annotation field should be used to describe their actual roles and the evidence for that conclusion.

Sorry for such a long explanation of this suggestion. I hope I've explained my thinking reasonably clearly, but would be happy to discuss further or respond to any questions.

Regards,

Ted