"The artists of a song must be traceable to existing people. If there is no existing person recorded to be the artist, then Unknown Artist is to be used. Fictional characters or programs like Vocaloids cannot be used as the sole artist of any given song."

Currently the rule states that fictional characters and vocaloid are not viable in the artist field by themselves, needing a certain modification for them to be accepted, such as "CV: "

This rule currently denies itself when talking about aliases, for example "Miki Sayaka vs. Miki Sayaka (fw. Miki Sayaka)". This artist field uses a fictional character only, but the original artist is actually "gmtn. vs. kozato (fw. LUZE)", the previous example was modified because of a BMS event, making Miki Sayaka an alias for the artists featured in the original source.

How does this rule denies itself then?
The first line states "The artists of a song must be traceable to existing people." which in this case and most likely any case where an alias is used would be correct, for the sole reason that searching "Miki Sayaka vs. Miki Sayaka (fw. Miki Sayaka)" will show information about their original artists. However, the last part of the rule states that:

"Fictional characters or programs like Vocaloids cannot be used as the sole artist of any given song."
Directly contradicting itself, making "Miki Sayaka vs. Miki Sayaka (fw. Miki Sayaka)" unavailable to use, since Miki Sayaka is a fictional character from Madoka Magica.

Then, i would like to propose a change for the rule so it makes more clear that the use of aliases is explicitly accepted, instead of giving a yes-no response. The rule would be as follows:

"The artists of a song must be traceable to existing people. If there is no existing person recorded to be the artist, then Unknown Artist is to be used. Fictional characters or programs like Vocaloids cannot be used as the sole artist of any given song. A fictional character's name may be used in the artist field in case it has been used as an official alias for the respective original artists."

This would make so that fictional characters can be used in the artist field under certain ciscumstances without any kind of modification, just like the example i pointed out previously. It would also explicitly allow other kind of alias like VTubers, which had quite some discussion before because of the increasing amount of content they've been creating.

I agree this is a thing that needs clarification but I'm not sure the proposed wording fixes that ambiguity

When a fictional character is credited as the singer of a song, the artist field is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. For live action, credit the voice actor only.

may also need revisiting

We need a wordsmith

" A fictional character's name may be used in the artist field in case it has been used as an official alias for the respective original artists."

Could be reworded as

" In case the artist officially lists its work under an alias, the alias should be used for the respective original artist."

This also would fix cases like "Marina and the Diamonds", which uses an official alias for some of her later songs in "MARINA".



The difference with Crissa's proposal is that "been used as an official alias" can mean only one instance of being used under an alias can pass, but "officially lists" gives more a sense of "this is how the artist actually wants to be represented and is not a one-off joke for an april fools" or something.



Gray areas are not nice for rules though..., we do need a wordsmith indeed.


EDIT: Also, it should maybe be specified that the alias is only to be used for the song where the artist used the alias, and not for all works.



EDIT #2:

"When a fictional character is credited as the singer of a song, the artist field is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. For live action, credit the voice actor only."


Could be reworded with this new proposal from Crissa as

"If a fictional character is credited as the singer or composer of a song as an alias, use only the alias for the artist field and add the name of the creator in the tags. For cases where the fictional character is not an alias but represents the character of a work of fiction related to the song, the artist field is to be formatted in a Character (CV: Voice Actor) format. For live action, credit the voice actor only."


Idk, too convoluted maybe...

IMO, This is just if we are accepting "Hatsune Miku" acceptable for the artist field again (Since maybe some people may use this to exploit it from now.)

Perhaps: "In the special case where the alleged artist uses a Fictional Character as an alias for either a special event or alikes, you may use either the original or the alias for the Artist Field as long as there is traceable data about said event."

i mean i feel like this applies more to vocaloid than anything else. i don't really think every vocaloid song needs to have their vocaloid listed in the artist box (example: wowaka (feat. Hatsune Miku)) unless that's how the artist wanted it. but i dunno, it really depends. some people just like miku's songs more than len or rin's songs, so they might want to find a good way to search that up, but people already put the vocaloid in tags already if the artist doesn't credit a vocaloid

existing people should perhaps be reconsidered as "valid alias", using the Google Rule where situations are unclear, perhaps?

"The artists of a song must be traceable to existing people. If there is no existing person recorded to be the artist, then Unknown Artist is to be used. Fictional characters or programs like Vocaloids cannot be used as the sole artist of any given song. Additionally, if the artists credited themselves under an alias for specific content, it must be used instead of the original name for that content."

Would force using VTubers names instead of their original ones, same for the example i gave on my first post but Vocaloids would remain the same since the composers already credit themselves on their works when working with Vocaloid, unless i'm mistaken here.


@Noffy not sure if that would need a revisit since i don't think this issue has anything to do with "CV: " format, it's an addition in case the artist credits themselves as the singer, for example when an existing person is doing the voice of an anime character, unless i'm missing something.

@Eph
"The artists of a song must be traceable to existing people or alias. If none of these are recorded to be the artist, then Unknown Artist is to be used."

You mean something like this? i'm kinda unsure about the last point tho, it contradicts itself so maybe removing it would be enough since it's already been clarified on the first point.

I'm kinda bad at wording this stuff properly orz

^

i don't really know how vtubers would be handled, because they are technically fictional characters with voice actors, but at the same time, the voice actor isn't always apparent. maybe something like mlp songs where the artist is the composer of the song instead of the vocalist (daniel ingram is always credited as the artist in mlp songs, and maybe something can be applied to vtuber songs.

maybe for now, songs featuring vtubers could use the cv format, considering we do know kizuna ai's va. but this might be confusing for other vtubers, because they don't have an official confirmation of if that person is actually the va. for all we know, they could just sound similar.

no there is no reason to use cv for vtuber because vtuber is like a streamer - it would be like if a twitch streamer sang a song and we used their real name instead of their twitch username. doesn't make much sense since they are identified by their online name and persona...

Nao Tomori wrote:

no there is no reason to use cv for vtuber because vtuber is like a streamer - it would be like if a twitch streamer sang a song and we used their real name instead of their twitch username. doesn't make much sense since they are identified by their online name and persona...

yeah but at the same time, rc states that artists should be traced to existing people. XXXTENTACION, although not a real name, is an online persona claimed by Jahseh Onfroy, so people actually know who's XXXTENTACION. but on the other hand, people don't know who's behind korone, or watame, or any other hololive streamer. and i don't think we should just put "Hololive - [song]" in metadata boxes, because that's dumb. maybe you could just have the artist be the composer (like in my little pony's case with every song by daniel ingram despite him not singing in it), but i dunno.

Yah, this is more focused on artist that uses other fictional characters (Like Goku from DBZ or Hatsune Miku) as an alias for special events.
Which, at least for Noffy and Ascendance, it's rankeable to have "Hatsune Miku - Song" if conditions are fullfilled.

i feel like a lot of the suggested ways of wording this are too complicated. id replace the last sentence

Fictional characters or programs like Vocaloids cannot be used as the sole artist of any given song.

with this:

A song's sole artist cannot be a fictional character or program unless it is the artist's alias.

does this work?

that seems to cover it ye, the "it is the" part itches me a bit since to me it suggests that there's only one available alias, maybe it's just me tho

Pull request is open at https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/4917

Merged.

Yup! And thread archived