Hi, this rule about to use the Source Field just got adjusted by ppy himself

changes:

old rule wrote:

You must use the Source field if the song comes from or is directly tied to another media such as a video game, movie, series, etc. Website names, album names, or BMS are not acceptable sources. If the song was featured or tied to a media after it was released, the source field is optional. osu! may be used as a source for osu!'s Featured Artist content. If a song has multiple potential sources, any options are valid. For remixes, arrangements, or covers based upon the original song, the source(s) of the original song would apply in the same way.

new rule wrote:

You must use the Source field if the song comes from or is directly tied to another media such as a video game, movie, series, web site, community etc. If the song was featured or tied to a media after it was released, the source field should not be used. If a song has multiple potential sources, any option is valid. For remixes, arrangements, or covers based upon the original song, the source(s) of the original song would apply in the same way.

0. osu! can not longer be used as a source for featured artist tracks unless they are marked with an osu! icon on the FA listing, this is not up for discussion.

Other suggestions/changes include
1. websites can be used as source such as Newgrounds (think "x is a Newgrounds Artist") and potentially even Soundcloud, Youtube, etc.
2. BMS can be allowed as source
3. Album name disallowed as source is removed they're still disallowed
4. osu! as source can be used for custom songs for osu tournaments, for example ooparts

The goal of this thread:
Go through which of these suggestions make sense and which ones don't. Adjust the rule to a middle ground or make new rules to fill in gaps. Ideally the result is malleable enough to allow edge cases.

If the song was featured or tied to a media after it was released, the source field should not be used

This is so hard to check for though??? Some songs are super obscure before being added to the media and their main identity is as x thing's song. Especially in older media like old TV shows or movies where it's not well documented and hard to check for. Anything before 2010 becomes really challenging with this method.

Imagine you and everyone only know a song for being in a rhythm game, and someone comes along with something like "oh it was released on an album 6 months earlier"

And then you have to check if the artist mentioned "oh I made it for upcoming x y z " which is usually on social media or poorly archived news sites. Sounds like a disaster to check for.

This basically makes it REQUIRED you HAVE to confirm if the song came first or not to HAVE TO or HAVE NOT TO use the source.

IN MEDIA -> POPULAR ASSOCIATION -> CAN USE SOURCE

is ideal.

This also currently disallows stuff like Re:Re using the Erased anime as a source even though that's a huge association for the TV Size??

Or listing songs used in Ib with Ib as the source when that's the PRIMARY way people know those songs. They were released before hand and added later. Now it can't use the popular associated source?? Similar goes for other small projects too.

This part of the change sounds like a huge L. The rest seems fine but this part is NOT good.

this just makes things way more tedious than they need to be.

examples of why this is not preferred:

- any non-original anime song shouldnt be using the anime as the source

- any rhythm game song not made for the game (ie anything not a sdvx contest song) should not be using the game as the source

only upside is the fa stuff cuz it keeps the osu original stuff with the correct source but I'm not seeing the benefit for other stuff.

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other suggested changes were pretty much worked out of the mix across the years for a reason? bms, yt, sc, etc are where you can acquire songs and not actual concrete sources. I wouldnt really agree with making them valid sources again cuz they're not comparable to games, shows, or movies cuz at that rate you could say anything is from yt.

yaspo wrote:

0. osu! can not longer be used as a source for featured artist tracks unless they are marked with an osu! icon on the FA listing, this is not up for discussion.

always thought using osu as a source was dumb unless it's something like ooparts

yaspo wrote:

1. websites can be used as source such as Newgrounds (think "x is a Newgrounds Artist") and potentially even Soundcloud, Youtube, etc.

terrible idea

yaspo wrote:

3. Album name disallowed as source is removed

way too late to do this now, would only create insane amounts of confusion, there should be an entirely new field for album names + wtf do you do when it has a source and an album? forcing a priority is retarded

yaspo wrote:

4. osu! as source can be used for custom songs for osu tournaments, for example ooparts

fine


also agree with what eiri and noffy said

suggestion 0 is fine
suggestion 1 doesn't make sense, using "Soundcloud" or "YouTube" as a source is pointless (ESPECIALLY YouTube as literally every song ever conceived is on there) -- having this as an option just makes metadata even more of a complicated mess than it already is
suggestion 2 similar reasoning to suggestion 1
suggestion 3 this is literally what tags are for
suggestion 4 is fine (basically just an addendum to suggestion 0, isn't it?)

suggestions 1-3 just needlessly complicate metadata and make songs even more of a chore to find sources for

virtually any recently released song can be labeled as from "YouTube" or "Spotify" alongside the album those songs come from (if they're part of an album) -- that's 3 potential sources you can use, and 3 sources that are entirely unnecessary because tags already exist to cover all of these. if a song was made exclusively on youtube and released there, for example, then just put "youtube" in the tags. there's no need to have it as the source. phasing that out and having everything under sources makes tags completely useless except for guest difficulty mappers.

you can say the same thing for anime/TV/movies/video game sources (i.e. they should just be tags), but the difference is, a majority of people directly associate songs made for those media to them. this gives much more of a justification for it to be labeled as a source, because that is the main way people have heard of the song. i can almost guarantee you absolutely zero people associate the song "I'm A Believer" by Smash Mouth to the album "Smash Mouth", or "All Star" to the album "Astro Lounge" -- and that's just two random examples.

that's what the source field should be used for, imo -- when a song is either directly made for some piece of media (as is the case with most anime openings/endings/inserts), or is heavily associated with a piece of media (going back to the previous example, "All Star" would make way more sense using either "Shrek" or "Mystery Men" as its source, despite both the movies releasing after the album the song came from).

plus what mordred mentioned about this change being way too late, it'd pretty much cause metadata consistency to become nonexistent

literally none of these make sense. even the 0th one, because the reason osu as source is a thing is because source can be used for any of the media a song appears in officially rather than just things that the song was commissioned for (which seems like one of the goals? but not really cuz youtube / album isnt a media??).

websites should not be used as a source unless the song is explicitly tied to them, like if slither.io had some theme song that someone wanted to map. otherwise osu should also be usable as a source since you can get songs there.

bms is a file type not a source. that would be like putting .tja as a source for any taiko song. bms of fighters contests, ok maybe arguable as it's a media event, but not just bms by itself.

album name - just no. it's not the source media, it's just the album name. the point of the field is highlighting the source media the song is from, which an album doesn't meet.

1, 2 and 3 are silly for reasons already stated above, especially agreeing with Mordred regarding a hypothetical Album field in the future... 0 and 4 are entirely reasonable though IMO

So can I do for example
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

and it's perfectly legitimate ?? ? ?

osu! as source only for songs that are explicitly made for the game like ooparts and one one is all I was asking for, good change

pretty much agree with everything eiri-, noffy and mordred already said

can i inquire as to who was consulted before pushing this and if no-one then why not

also disagree with 1, 2 and 3 for obvious reasons that have been stated already

Limiting osu! as a source makes sense

Everything other part of the rule does not make sense at the slightlest. Stuff like BOFU and the such should be allowed but really shouldn't go beyond that or we will make everything extremely convoluted.

my opinion: Always force media of first appearance. If it first appeared in BMS, it should be BMS, if it first appeared in osu, it should be osu!, if it first appeared in Youtube, it should be Youtube, and if it first appeared in an album then it should be that album's name or None, preferrably. Everything else goes similar to what I've listed.

If the song was featured or tied to a media after it was released, the source field should not be used

oh god i didn't even notice this, yeah that's the kind of digwork we want to avoid

Pretty much agree with everything so far.

The logic behind 1 and 2 is more to use some kind of website exclusivity as a valid form of sourcing, eg. the artist only exists on Newgrounds so they are a "Newgrounds Artist" and have Newgrounds as source.
This logic seems bad though because
a. re-uploading the song anywhere else instantly invalidates that kind of source source, while easily accessible to artists. This is kinda dumb for metadata
b. it's hardly specific for sites that host a large variety of content, being directed to the source will not provide you with related content
Nao's sliter.io example seems valid enough as a source though, so maybe "website names" in the old rule should be changed to "media hosting platform" or something .. ? no idea

for 3, agree that albums are not media and it just creates a conflict between which the preferred or prioritized source is, both Game and Album could be equally valid

From going through here and other convos again I feel like the one editing the rule sees "Source" as a broad form of association when it's really always been used to purely cover the media a track comes from.
So yeah making these changes would be .. very .. inconsistent

can i inquire as to who was consulted before pushing this and if no-one then why not

seems like it was just people who are taking their baby steps into these systems

@Chromate you really, really should ready Noffy's post on this - while on paper valid, it's not practical in the slightest

This is an incredibly silly rulechange for obvious reasons.

Can we just have osu file format v15 to get a legitimate album field and a lot of other requested changes? Pointless rule amendments like this only serve to confuse and annoy people.

0 is long overdue
1-3 are nonsense

i love more confusing metadata changes

0 is ok the rest bad

just wanna add that i 100% agree with everyone else in the thread regarding 1/2/3 being poor decisions

basically: some sources are just straight up too generic to be useful (like "YouTube"), and separating songs from the thing that made them super popular even if it was released before it just sounds unnecessary. albums should be separated from sources for reasons mentioned by nao

ok youtube soundcloud etc is surely a bad idea but with some thought I have come to the idea that we can use this as a starting point of discussion:

1. if the song appears in one medium*
-> use that as source.
2. if it appears in multiple mediums*
-> omit source, send all mediums to tags.

* medium includes Anime, TV Shows, Games, Programs, but does not include Music/Video Hosting websites or their links.

This kind of information should NOT be included in the .osu file in the first place, since the .osu file is immortalized in history via replays depending on its hash.

For example, if a song was later re-used for an anime, I'd like to add that anime to the source of the song, but changing the .osu file after ranking is impossible.

IMO if we want more granular metadata it should be consulted with the devs to add more fields like album, original URL, etc, or just using tags like we've always been doing.

Rule 0 is reasonable.

Agree with what Mordred & Nao have said... Don't get why this was pushed without 0 review or discussion at all

Rule 0 & 4 are fine, everything else is really questionable

Okay so let me get this straight, Featured artist songs can't use osu! as the source field unless they were made exclusively for osu!. Okay. But unofficial custom user created content can have osu! as the source?

For the rest of the suggestions I have one big question. We have been teaching mappers for nearly a decade now how metadata should be organized, why should we throw all that away on a whim? We are going to have giant inconsistencies between currently ranked content and newly ranked content.


Suggestion 1:

websites can be used as source such as Newgrounds (think "x is a Newgrounds Artist") and potentially even Soundcloud, Youtube, etc.

On the issue of including websites in the source, there is going to be massive issues of abuse and inconsistencies. People often upload their songs to multiple websites: Youtube, Spotify, Soundcloud, Itunes, Facebook. Which website should be used as the source? I see there being two options and both have major consequences.

Option 1: Whatever the mapper feels like. If the mapper sees the song uploaded on youtube, they can decide to put it in the source field. There is going to be hundreds of discussions on whether or not the youtube upload is official or the "main" uploaded source. What if the mapper themselves uploads the content to a website under the artist's name so they can change the source.

Option 2: Whatever website the content was uploaded on first. I'd consider this option slightly better than option 1 but it still has drawbacks. Not all websites include exact hours:minutes:seconds for content upload date so determining the original/first upload may be impractical or impossible. What if the content is uploaded at same-day 2:00PM UTC-0 across multiple websites? Which website would be the source?

Now some of the major drawbacks to including websites in the source regardless of which option would be decided upon: Nearly every single map uploaded will have a video/music hosting platform as their source. The source field will hold no value anymore. What similarities do 1 Youtube map have from another? And that is if they are uploaded on Youtube. What if the content's main upload was on an explicit website? Do we really want explicit websites in the source field? I don't think so.

Suggestion 2:

BMS can be allowed as a source.

I believe that there are major problems with this proposal. The main and glaring issue is that BMS is a file format, not a source of content. Anything could have the source as BMS if it was uploaded in that format. What if a rhythm game uses BMS as their underlying chart file format? What would be the Source field for a beatmap of a song in that game be? BMS or the rhythm game? Are we going to start having SM (Stepmania Files), BEMUSE (bemuse BMS packs), and other rhythm game file formats as sources too? That just opens a huge can of worms that needs an entire discussion of its own.

Suggestion 3:

Album name disallowed as source is removed

So what are albums? Wikipedia says "An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium". Albums could contain any number of media, but how does the name of the album help determine the songs source? What if a song is uploaded as a single, and then years later organized into an album by the creator? The name of an album doesn't determine where the song originated from, its just an collection of songs.

Suggestion 4

osu! as source can be used for custom songs for osu tournaments, for example ooparts

I have many questions about this, first though I am going to examine the example given. ooparts. So this is a featured artist song by the artist camellia, and was used in the capacity of an official osu! tournament. There is one massive problem with this though. In camellia's featured artist listing page, ooparts doesn't have an osu! symbol next to it. This instantly disqualifies it from having osu! in the source due to the new rule osu! can not longer be used as a source for featured artist tracks unless they are marked with an osu! icon on the FA listing, this is not up for discussion..

I personally think that this makes ooparts a poor example to be used, since having osu! in the source field would contradict our rules. But onto the rest of the suggestion.

What does osu tournaments mean? Does this mean any community tournament, or only official tournaments. If it is only official tournaments, in what capacity does it need to be official? Does it need to be one of the 4/5 world-cups held every year? OWC OTWC OCWC OM4KWC OM7KWC? Or does official tournaments mean tournaments with badges or osu!staff provided rewards. More clarification is needed on this topic.

What does custom songs mean? Does this mean songs created for the sole purpose of the "osu tournament" or songs that have no other applicable source? What if an artist uploads their song, and then 2 months later it is approved by the artist for use in a tournament. Would that song be custom for the tournament?

Why should we limit osu! as the source only to tournaments?

Shouldn't any content created solely for the purpose of osu! have the ability for osu! to be in the source field? If we are going by suggestion 1 and suggestion 2, the content was originally uploaded to the https://osu.ppy.sh website and the file format was .OSU. When the "A labour of love" contest was finished, weren't the beatmaps created for that contest permitted to have osu! in the source? Shouldn't any similar song creation contest, whether community driven or official be given that right? When people create original content for the osu! platform, shouldn't they be permitted to show it? I believe the answer is yes.

Closing thoughts


I have a question for all of you. If all of these suggestions are pushed to the ranking criteria as is, what would the source field of newly ranked beatmaps be? Lets say an artist creates an original song and schedules an upload of an album including that song to Soundcloud and Youtube simultaneously. They then create a BMS chart of that song and upload it to their personal website.

We now have 5 conflicting potential source fields. Could the source field be either Youtube or Soundcloud? They were uploaded at the exact same time. Maybe the source field will be the album the song is a part of. Or maybe the source field will be BMS since the creator made a BMS chart. Or maybe the source field should be the Website the BMS file was uploaded to.

Do you want to design the exact precedence and order that these sources should take? Because they can't all be weighted equally. Only one source is allowed in the source field (and please do NOT change that) I personally am not looking forward to the day that I have to read a flow-chart on what I should put in the source field of my beatmaps.

0 and 4 are perfectly ok imo. everything else is a big no

for 1: how are you supposed to confirm this lol. people upload songs to sites like youtube, soundcloud etc without the artist’s permission all the time, and it makes things an absolute nightmare especially for songs that have had their original source deleted from the internet. it just would not work out in any practical scenario and is just unreasonable to be expected

for 2: BMS is a file type, not a source

for 3: this is far too confusing as previously mentioned, and it doesn’t make much sense to me to do this now. and songs that were released in albums can be featured in games, and vice versa. it doesn’t make sense to me



this sort of change really should’ve been communicated and discussed before being pushed like this, why did it just go through with no review? this is way too impactful on the ranking process and goes against the entire point of all of the metadata ruling decisions made in the past years… I’d really love to know what’s the reason behind such a sudden change

yup (as with the others) #0 is something i can definitely vouch off

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#4 does seem to require some further clarification tho : while the suggestion is cool does it only apply to songs commissioned by the osu!team for official tournaments (such as ooparts/of ambrosia/etc), or does it apply to *every* custom song made for any osu! tournament regardless of whether the tournament is considered "official" or not?

i'm raising this concern primarily because nowadays there have been more and more custom songs/beatmaps that were specifically made for community-run tournaments fwiw, such as this one which was made for omt 2021 or this one which was made for the coffee hispanic tournament

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as for the others uhh yeah in their current proposed form i don't really think they're a good step to take going forward

Few problems people are bringing up with current wording:

OP points 0 & 4 are fine and most people seem to be in agreement with them.

Point 1 has people worried that people who find songs on YouTube will just use YouTube as a source, which is pretty useless and definitely not what the intent is with the wording change.

What the platform rule wording should encompass is use cases where a particular song or track comes from an artist heavily interwoven into the community of that platform, for example, using "YouTube" as a source for a map on Pewdiepie's Congratulations track would make sense (since he is a huge youtuber, the track got famous from YouTube and heavily features YouTube culture).

BN server discussion suggested this kind of use case should be leveled as an exception to the previous platform rule wording instead of omitting it entirely, and I'm inclined to agree with them completely.

Point 2 covers another shaky case where BMS technically refers to a file format to some people and a community for others. Strangely, there has never been any discussion on having events (BOFA, BOFU, etc etc) as actual sources which is extremely weird. It is logical that a track that comes from one of those events should have it as a source, such as Street's Sakura Fubuki which comes from BOFU2015, and thus should have that as it's primary source.

We need to add some wording and make this kind of thing standard since I think it solves the issue the BMS change was intended to address.

Point 3 involving album changes is a highly contentious one as people seem to be pretty split across the board as to whether a track is "sourced" from an album or simply belongs to it. My personal thoughts on this are that albums as sources should be allowed, but ONLY if there is not a higher priority game/movie/film media source instead. A track from Skyrim should therefore have Skyrim as the source, as is logical. A track that does not belong to a platform or event (as points 2 or 1 cover) could have its first-available album used as a source, as long as that album is not a single of the same name as the track itself.

Otherwise, the biggest issue is with this wording:

If the song was featured or tied to a media after it was released, the source field should not be used.

This introduces research requirements that won't be met and will be argued extensively over. It cannot exist in this wording or we are going to lose thousands of man hours to absolutely pointless arguments for something that really does not matter all that much.

I think establishing a series of 'floating priorities' as above is the best way to go with the Source field, and codifying them. For example:

1. Has the track featured prominently on a platform with strong cultural links to said platform and is the primary way most people will know of the track (such as a career YouTuber releasing their track on YouTube)? If so, use the platform as the source. Otherwise, platforms should be avoided as sources.
2. Was the track used in (or made for) a specific game, film, movie in which it is prominently known for? If so, use that feature as the source. The track must be an osu! original to use osu! as the source in this way.
3. Was the track created for a particular event or music contest (BOFU, BOFA, A Labour of Love, osu! remix contests)? If so, use the event or contest as the source.
4. If the track does not fall under any of the categories above, does it belong to an album? If so, use the first album the track chronologically appears in as its source. If this album is considered a 'single' with a name the same as the track with very little alteration, do not use it as a source.
5. If the track does not meet any category here, the source field should be left blank.

People have pointed out to me that album has not been used in source for many years and thus adding it now might be a bit too late to the party, so to speak. There are open issues to create a new 'album' metadata field, so if that is being pursued in earnest, source should probably not be extended to cover albums.

Album in source is still a terrible idea, I've said this many times before and I'll keep saying it, it's simply too late to start doing that now

Assume you have a source that looks like シェルノサージュ〜失われた星へ捧ぐ詩. Assume you have another map with 死を司る神の名を持つ者 in the source field. How does the average osu user know which one the album, and which one the game is? Album names have not been in the source for so many years that it would only cause confusion.

i agree with those priorities except i dont think framing them as a "flowchart" works well - it should be more like a check-the-box activity to determine POSSIBLE sources for a song, then the mapper can choose the one they want after figuring out the relevant ones. that's actually what people do currently anyway; the only change is adding events to the previous rules and cultural phenomena like pewdiepie videos as an exception to the no websites rule that used to exist.

tldr: revert, add the rule about osu as source only for osu-exclusives, add "events" to list of valid sources, add youtube exception

A small thought I have with this...

I personally don't think it's a good idea to implement things as YouTube or Newgrounds as potential sources for songs from popular content creators because it makes it feel as the song belongs to the entirety of the website, rather than the community of the content creator, devaluing the community itself, and makes things way too general, which is, as far as I know, not the point of Metadata.

Based off the OLD RULE FROM BEFORE TODAY this is the changes I would suggest to best encompass current discussion.

propose wrote:

You must use the Source field if the song comes from or is directly tied to another media such as a video game, movie, series, etc. If the song was featured or tied to a media after it was released, the source field is optional. If a song has multiple potential sources, any options are valid. For remixes, arrangements, or covers based upon the original song, the source(s) of the original song would apply in the same way.

1. Website names such as YouTube or Newgrounds may only be used as sources when the song is tied to specific cultural phenomena related to the platform, or the song is composed as a website theme/background song.
2. In cases where a song compilation/remix/medley/etc. has songs without a common source, the sources must be put in the tags instead of the source field (unless the compilation is prominently tied to a source itself).
3. osu! itself should never be used in the source field except in cases where the track was specifically created for osu! (also known as an osu! original), such as commissioned tournament tiebreaker tracks.

Album names
I would leave out album names entirely as they have been very definitively NOT A SOURCE on osu! for YEARS (edit: at least 6 years by looking at archives like this) now and changing it at this point would be changing the entire function of the source field in the game as of right now. I think working towards having its own field would be best.

Events like BOFU
Not currently in my proposal but not unheard of. Just needs to be worded with care so we don't end up with confusing sources such as:

1. song contests for media where the contest name is the same as the media. songs that didn't win and get added to the media having it as a source is misleading.
2. how events like concerts where the song premiered at the concert should be handled. Often difficult to trace especially for smaller artists.

For the question of "which option to use" I believe a basic guideline which HAS AN ONGOING THREAD HERE: community/forums/topics/1417008?n=1 to cover that globally with other metadata fields in terms of preference would be better.

Ephemeral wrote:

Was the track created for a particular event or music contest (BOFU, BOFA, A Labour of Love, osu! remix contests)? If so, use the event or contest as the source.

This would be a great addition in my opinion. Maybe it could be specified that the standard abbreviation of the event (if it exists) should be used as source, e.g. "BOFXVII" instead of "THE BMS OF FIGHTERS XVII -VISION THE RETRO FUTURE-", as these can get long and unwieldy sometimes.

hmm, music sharing websites as source seems.. weird.

BMS -> yes, obv, i think it was disallowed for dmca reasons or smth?

album name.. neutral.

Albums being allowed doesn't make sense to me if the field is thought of as where a song COMES from.

YouTube and stuff just makes no sense whatsoever to me since that's not a viable source of the song unless it's like from some official YouTube original or something.

I don't know anything about BMS so no comments there but yeah for the most part I don't get why or how these are reasonable.

Topics 0 and 4 are pretty much fine.

About topics 1-3:

1. Albums shouldn't be on source field, since it can bring ambiguity (there are multiple examples of the same song being part of different albums).
2. As pretty much everyone said above, using websites as sources shouldn't be a thing with the exception of official content. We should treat them as we treat osu! with the topic 0 (if they are "official" content it's fine).
3. About BMS, i'm not sure, but the fact the term comes after a file format is kinda wierd IMHO. If there are contests coming after the term they should be allowed as valid sources tho.

disagree with using media websites (such as youtube,soundcloud) as a source, that'd look so weird.

agree with using BMS as a source

disagree with using album name as a source for the same reason as what Mordred said

Point three was not an intentional behavioural change. An album is not a source and should never be a source. You can add it back to the wording in a better way if required.

BMS is non-arguable. If you think it shouldn't be a source you need to do more research. It is literally *the primary reason* a source field should exist. It is the only way to define a large collection of songs which are not released or available anywhere else apart from BMS.

Website should, as discussed internally, only be used if that is the sole source of a release, to the point the song/artist is only known for that source. The example I gave was "Newgrounds" because again, that is the *only* source for a lot of music, to the point people know (and search for) said music using that word. I don't mind if this change is reverted or reworded to be more clear.

None of these should be contentious or "requiring more effort" changes - the idea is to open up the source field to be used for more cases where it is correct to put a source that was previously disallowed. But I welcome rewording the rules if required to make things more clear.

Album makes no sense to have in source, please don't let people do this, album is fine in tags. Whilst songs are released as part of an album it kind of goes against the idea of the source field in osu as the source field is used to indicate ties to other media, not to give more description about the song itself. It also prevents cluttering because artists have the need to make long album names every now and then.


The source should also not include things like publishing platforms in my opinion. for example, Youtube should only be an option in cases like this with the Song being used to promote a contest sponsored by Youtube itself but in this case i'd argue it would even be Youtube Shorts.

Site only being allowed when it is a tie-in (same as all the other listed sources) sounds fine.

Album does not need to be discussed further. As I said, it should be a given. If that means it needs to be stated, please add it back. Maybe on a separate line.

still feel like websites like youtube and newgrounds are too vague of websites to be considered sources. linking it in the description would probably be a good alternative of shedding light on those "sources".

Point 0 and 4 reached their consensus that it should be fine. Point 3, as peppy said that it's not intended so not gonna talk about it anymore.

I have a concern for Point 1, though. Using websites like youtube, newgrounds, and similar - gives me the same vibe of using google.com as reference material for the research paperwork, to be honest.

At most, I could agree with Noffy's proposal. If the song is tied to specific cultural phenomena related to such a platform, it would not look that weird in my eye. But if it's just that the song got only uploaded in that only platform and not anywhere else (e.g. meme song by the random guy on the internet) - using that website name looks pretty weird.

Revising the checklist based on the past bit of feedback:

1. Has the track featured prominently on a platform or community with strong cultural links to said place and is the primary way most people will know of the track (such as a career YouTuber releasing their track on YouTube, communities like the BMS sphere, Newgrounds etc)? If so, use the platform as the source. Otherwise, platforms should be avoided as sources.
2. Was the track used in (or made for) a specific piece of media in which it is prominently known for? If so, use the title of that media as the source. The track must be an osu! original to use osu! as the source in this way.
3. Was the track created for a particular event or music contest (BOFU, BOFA, A Labour of Love, osu! remix contests)? If so, use the event or contest as the source. If the event goes by a commonly identifiable acronym (see above), that acronym plus the year of the event should be used as the source and stylized as appropriate (e.g: BOFU2015).
4. If the track does not meet any category here, the source field should be left blank. Albums should not be used in the source field at any point.

using the tournament/event name instead of osu! is definitely cool, i like that idea. though i think the clause about acronymizing it should be removed, as other (normal) sources use full non-acronymized names (and i think more people not familiar with a specific tournament would understand the source name if used in full)

Ephemeral wrote:

Revising the checklist based on the past bit of feedback:

1. Has the track featured prominently on a platform or community with strong cultural links to said place and is the primary way most people will know of the track (such as a career YouTuber releasing their track on YouTube, communities like the BMS sphere, Newgrounds etc)? If so, use the platform as the source. Otherwise, platforms should be avoided as sources.
2. Was the track used in (or made for) a specific piece of media in which it is prominently known for? If so, use the title of that media as the source. The track must be an osu! original to use osu! as the source in this way.
3. Was the track created for a particular event or music contest (BOFU, BOFA, A Labour of Love, osu! remix contests)? If so, use the event or contest as the source. If the event goes by a commonly identifiable acronym (see above), that acronym plus the year of the event should be used as the source and stylized as appropriate (e.g: BOFU2015).
4. If the track does not meet any category here, the source field should be left blank. Albums should not be used in the source field at any point.

What does "osu! original" original mean? There needs to be more context behind this. Does this mean part of an official contest, featured artist song created only for osu!, or any original content created only for osu!?

If osu! original is going to be a keyword used in the ruling, its definition should be included in the ranking criteria glossary.

Please clarify. Thank you.

Purplegaze wrote:

using the tournament/event name instead of osu! is definitely cool, i like that idea. though i think the clause about acronymizing it should be removed, as other (normal) sources use full non-acronymized names (and i think more people not familiar with a specific tournament would understand the source name if used in full)

I can only speak with respect to BMS contests, but in those cases the abbreviation is actually used way more than the full name, music is tagged with it, etc., especially in the big annual events which are more known. The "full name" in many cases works as a subtitle. If you want to search music from the 2019 BOF event you search for "BOFXV" as that's what all the songs are usually tagged with (on youtube, soundcloud, etc.) instead of what would be the proper full name "THE BMS OF FIGHTERS eXtreme Violence" which no one says because of its length and unwieldiness (and could go in the tags).

My opinion about this

0. Agree with this. When artist used this song for other places, it should not have source as osu!

1. Unless that's youtube poop or something meme, it should not have newgrounds or souldcloud or youtube as source. Although NG musics are like posted on NG and can be used various games in NG
2. I disagree with this. If the song which is on both SDVX and BMS, which source should be used? It might be okay as tag.
3. I little agree with this but if official media source exists and it is tie-up like Gintama musics, we should use media rather than album name.
4. It is right, if osu! releases the song as first then you can use source as osu! .

0 I never really understood so that's cool
1 I'd be fine with if it's like the only source for the song, otherwise as other's have said everything and their grandma's song is on yt
2 sure
3 disagree, would make soruce way too broad, especially since some songs get re-released on multiple albums, compilation albums and whatnot. using those in the source field isn't going to help anyone find out what show, website, or album the song is from because it's not clear what the source actually is in that case

plus what more dread said
4 seems reasonable that if u commission a song to be released for use on here that you'd be allowed to use osu as a source

but again using osu as source isn't going to help u find the song
ure already on freaking osu

0: Seems fine unless they're osu! originals.

1: I don't think this makes sense. I see websites as a place to upload music rather than where the music was sourced.

2: This one I’m neutral about. Like many people above me said, BMS is a file type so it would be weird to use this. At the same time, there has to be a way to source songs made for BMS events. I think putting the event it came from would make sense (EX: BOFU2015, G2R2018) since it was made for that event. It's like putting different IIDX/Pop'n Music games as a source instead of just Beatmania IIDX/Pop'n. Idk, more discussion has to be done since the community is divided on this.

3: Still disallowed

4: Stated this already

peppy wrote:

Point three was not an intentional behavioural change. An album is not a source and should never be a source. You can add it back to the wording in a better way if required.

there's a way to reduce this kind of mistake. it's called "asking for feedbacks before it's applied"

In-depth about point 2.

peppy wrote:

BMS is non-arguable. If you think it shouldn't be a source you need to do more research. It is literally *the primary reason* a source field should exist. It is the only way to define a large collection of songs which are not released or available anywhere else apart from BMS.

Can't say you are the right one here.

BMS is a file format created by Urao Yane in 1998 specifically for the emulator BM98, which is an emulator of the game Beatmania by KONAMI. After the format has been introduced, it becomes a standard file format used for emulators of the same sort that simulates Beatmania, and afterwards Beatmania IIDX, with the BME file format. While BMS is established as a file format for the Beatmania, and the Beatmania IIDX series, there has never been a official distribution platform for such songs using the file format, but they are posted on forums and other links.

Let’s go back to the definition of source. With regards to the metadata page of the osu! wiki, the source refers to the origin of the song. BMS has been defined clearly as a file format, not an origin. Artists don’t create songs because of BMS, they create songs and distribute it using such file format. While it may be the only way to define songs which are not released or available anywhere else apart from BMS, it doesn’t mean that BMS is a distribution platform for the songs, thus should not be used in the source. Very usually, these songs come from community-based platforms as distribution, or events that specifically uses these kind of file formats. In these cases, the event it came from, or the official platform should always be used, rather than BMS. In the case where the official platform the song is released is unclear, the source should be left empty instead.

Let’s say BMS are implemented into the rule as allowable source in the ranking criteria. Should that be derived a file format can be used as a source? Say for example, an artist that uses osu!’s keysound combined with the song to create a map, that the source can be OSU (the file format)? Similarly, a song composed for the .ksh file format with the combined FX effect (made for the SOUND VOLTEX emulator K-SHOOT MANIA and later adapted to multiple emulators like Unnamed SDVX Clone) can use KSH as source? It doesn’t make any sense in the sense that source should be the origin of the song.

You should consider this first before saying that this is non-arguable. May you need to provide the reason why you consider that BMS is an origin of a song that it can be implemented into the source field, and why a file format of the sort is justified as an origin of the song.

———

As for other points,

Point 0 makes sense. If songs are released before osu! licenses it, osu! should not be the source of the song.
Point 1 about the platforms, unless the song is composed specifically aimed for the platform to use, say, YouTube decides that a certain song would be composed as its “theme song”, it should not be used as a source. While the likes of YouTube and Soundcloud are an easy access for artists to release a song, having multiple platforms that releases the song would just confuse as to which source comes first. To prevent ambiguity, using websites as the source should be avoided.
No comment about point 3. Should be very obvious why albums are not sources, as they are not the origin of the song.
Point 4, I agree. If the song is composed specifically for osu!, the source should be osu!, since the song originates from osu!.

just gonna assist a few other points because almost everyone expressed their dislike to the proposed changes in OP (since almost all of them are pretty terrible calls)

eiri- wrote:

- any non-original anime song shouldnt be using the anime as the source

- any rhythm game song not made for the game (ie anything not a sdvx contest song) should not be using the game as the source

By definition, a source should be the original place a song comes from and any sort of remxies, mash-ups or other alteration of an anime song (or also videogame or anything else that is altered in a way it can be clearly distinguished from the original version) should not put the origin of the original song as source. It's by definiton wrong.

It makes perfectly sense applying the second point because we literally do this now with osu!.

Chromate wrote:

my opinion: Always force media of first appearance. If it first appeared in BMS, it should be BMS, if it first appeared in osu, it should be osu!, if it first appeared in Youtube, it should be Youtube, and if it first appeared in an album then it should be that album's name or None, preferrably. Everything else goes similar to what I've listed.

I'd like to doubt the legitimacy of the source field; being an accurate and reliable information source, as it is by regular conditions the only field that can vary and change its source, unless the artist applied changes to their name or song title for weird unknown complicated reasons. As enough has stated that source is so weird to handle and hard to research, if we enforce harder rules, I'd like to see it being retired from usage and move it to tags instead. As it can refer to more things. Needless to say it's a terrible call to refer websites as sources because it clearly says nothing about its origin, nor album would be a good idea to refer as source because while they ARE a source, it can always vary as by definiton: an album is a collection of songs. Also when it comes to video games: we enough cases of songs being provided in multiple installments, such as the Shovel Knight soundtrack. Some songs are included in all released games so I don't see the purpose to apply the first game as source when the entire series use them.

Also I am going on a strike if I see Nico Nico Douga being used as a source ever again.


Instead to propse a fix to an element that has always been flawed since day 1 I'd instead suggest getting rid of from the source field and refer to a tagging system that makes it much easier to search for a song being involved in multiple sources (I think someone referred to it as "-booru taggin"). It would solve the trouble for songs with (too) many appearances, the issue with albums and preferably have the accessibility to adjust this on website, because it's obvious that we cannot edit the .osu files everytime a new source is added to a map but it should be seperated entirely. and is a better solution on long-term than forcing wonky inconsistent and unreliable rules which clearly failed to achieve what they should.

Opened PR at https://github.com/ppy/osu-wiki/pull/6150

Largely based off of ephemeral's bullet points but without the bullet points as well as the general opinion shown throughout the thread. There are some aspects of the change that not everyone will 100% like but it seems like a decent compromise to me.

@Stefan I think a tagging system rehaul would be lovely but seems out of scope atm.

Edit: Merged