As repeatingly said, the artists of the songs used by osu! mappers are overdue a lot of credit. Many people learn about new artists via osu! but many artists have repeatingly mentioned the lack of credit they receive themselves for content becoming Ranked and popular in osu!.

I believe every artist that finds their song in osu! is deserving to have their assets, their online presentation and their creations promoted, they deserve to have their songs be promoted and purchased, to have their reputation grow and to aspire as artist altogether.

While the Featured Artist category brings a lot of partner's on board, the ones not on board still deserve the promotion and recognition for their beloved creations.

So I propose the following guideline for the Ranking Criteria, affecting all game modes equally:



Wording has been created by me spontaneously, so I am all open to suggestions.

Totally supporting this, starting with putting their official websites into my own ranked maps.

don't forget to ask them first, not everyone may like it.

What about maps already being ranked? They mostly lack of any credits towards the artist. Especially that after reaching Ranked status by the beatmap the creator of it can delete that from the describtion.

In my opinion something like credits to artists after clicking at Artist's name on site could display their socials/stores etc. could be good, but it's as well many effort.

Establishing a team to apply these to beatmap descriptions retrospectively is an idea I had in mind, however, one step at a time by having it apply to the newest content.

Having clickable artist names is maybe a way (although I doubt it's really a good design choice), but in lazer, the beatmap description is actually very prominent because the beatmap listing opens *in-game* when you click the beatmap link anywhere in-game. So this place could and should be utilized.

Mappers can sure delete it from the description, but it can be rolled back and locked down in the state prior the deletion (and the mapper can be sanctioned for attempting this then)

Maybe making something non-editable by the beatmap creator should be alright. Because even if you would put it in the description the beatmap creator may put it in the place where it wouldn't be noticeable at the first place in both site and in-game laser due to used space.

Adding a line that this should be visable at the first place in the map description would be better idea, but we need to keep in mind that some mappers like to use custom banners at the beatmaps description so then we are back to square one

I think the beatmap listing design could benefit from some changes here then, but as said, one step at a time. The beatmap description is a good place for stuff like that right now. And even if a better solution may be implemented in the future, we still have the referrals present on the beatmap listing once this idea has been approved to be common practise. Also the beatmap description offers a lot more wiggle room for the mapper to promote the song's artist in a personal fashion.

All in all, you shouldn't be overly concerned about mappers trying to circumvent this by maliciously editing their referral or beatmap descriptions retrospectively. We first want this to become a thing. There's no point in arguing how to prevent mappers circumventing it if it isn't even common practise yet.

Loctav wrote:

don't forget to ask them first, not everyone may like it.

If they don't, I'm happy to remove my maps from ranked, no big deal. I don't think I'm gonna get any responses from them, though.

And I am worried about the part "The artist should be asked for permission to implement this referral when it appears feasible."

I mean the artists already has the option to DMCA (as even noticeable part of osu!website on the bottom) so if artist will know about the osu! via the fans knowing an artist from osu! they actually can DMCA if they are not feeling great with their song being used that way.

I really like the idea of the promoting artists via the sharing their websites etc. just the point about the approval is a bit problematic...

The fact that the mapper has to get the artist approval to use the referral link can be quite problematic for some who are not very fine with having their songs used on the game.

However, the idea is very nice and it would be fair to promote the content we're using.

Pachiru wrote:

The fact that the mapper has to get the artist approval to use the referral link can be quite problematic for some who are not very fine with having their songs used on the game.

If the artist isn't fine with having their song used in the game, then maybe the song shouldn't be in the game...?

it is not easily possible to contact many artists and many artists who may not particularly care about their songs being used are contractually obligated to say no dont use it - at best you can strongly suggest placing direct links to support artists (not a rule), but in some cases their sites may be dead, they might not have a site, they might not release their songs officially (only youtube/niconico uploads) etc... it becomes very convoluted fast imo. how would you approach solving cases where it is not simple to link to an artist?

a.) You link *something* that represents the artist officially (even if it is just their youtube channel)
b.) You link *nothing* (hence why it's a guideline) but somehow show to the nominating BN that you tried finding something or tried reaching out.


And making the effort to reach out to them to ask should be at least expected. If they don't reply and/or don't care, then you at least tried and should be good to refer to them.

we already have a website-wide rule about making sure you have permission to use stuff in your mapset, adding this again to the ranking criteria would be redundant and unnecessary. if artists being ok with maps is what you're worried about, maybe work to enforcing that rule better instead.

(saw this being posted on a certain Discord server (・・；))

ehh... i'm leaning towards in favor to indifferent towards this being implemented as a guideline/rule tho (i mean i've literally been doing that since 2013 and i'm cool with whether the proposal passed or not passed through) but this particular line :

Loctav wrote:

The artist should be asked for permission to implement this referral when it appears feasible.

really bugs me tho as due to how different copyright system works this can be very case-by-case basis iirc (for example, if the song is under Public Domain then it would be more than fine to get the song pushed forward even without a referral but if the song is released under Creative Commons license, such as Charles445's Thunderstruck or my Taylor mapset, then a form of credit (in this case a referral) becomes an obligation even without contacting the artist beforehand).

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all in all tl;dr i liked the main idea of giving further credits to the artist(s) but as it stands the "The beatmap description should contain a referral to the song artist's official web presence(s)." part still could be revised/reworded better (or even deleted) in order to make the proposal more effective at its core sense in my opinion c:

UndeadCapulet wrote:

we already have a website-wide rule about making sure you have permission to use stuff in your mapset, adding this again to the ranking criteria would be redundant and unnecessary. if artists being ok with maps is what you're worried about, maybe work to enforcing that rule better instead.

It's not about permission to use stuff but about placing a referral. Having permission to use the stuff doesn't necessarily include the allowance to put referrals to the artist's web presence(s). This rule isn't about making sure the artist is fine with the song being used, this rule is about giving the artist sufficient credit by making people find their way to the artist and where they host their content.

You guys really need to stop worrying about copyright problems, because copyright isn't even the issue here. It's about respecting the artist's will to have their web presence be referred to or not.

Regulating beatmap descriptions with ranking criteria is ineffective since the description can be changed after the map is ranked. You could fix that by locking the description after ranking, but that's just a bandaid solution and it'd also disable certain nice things you can do with the description (such as linking to other maps of yours). Links to the artist's web presence should be implemented in some other way.

lewski wrote:

Regulating beatmap descriptions with ranking criteria is ineffective since the description can be changed after the map is ranked. You could fix that by locking the description after ranking, but that's just a bandaid solution and it'd also disable certain nice things you can do with the description (such as linking to other maps of yours). Links to the artist's web presence should be implemented in some other way.

A band-aid solution perhaps, but still a feasible way for an initial implementation of a common practise that is long overdue. I only want to have mappers give the artists the credit and promotion they deserve.

Mappers editing out necessary description parts can be sanctioned, as mentioned before.

extend this to include visuals used in backgrounds / videos, if a guideline like this is made i think it should encompass all assets in a beatmap

of course in some cases it's impossible to find out who actually is to credit for some of the hitsounds or something but e.g. backgrounds, videos (amv or whatever if ure using that) should be included

Same as Okoratu, I think your proposal is cool, but then we should do the same for background's artist too and etc..

lewski wrote:

Regulating beatmap descriptions with ranking criteria is ineffective since the description can be changed after the map is ranked. You could fix that by locking the description after ranking, but that's just a bandaid solution and it'd also disable certain nice things you can do with the description (such as linking to other maps of yours). Links to the artist's web presence should be implemented in some other way.

Official support for artist links and other credits would be ideal, however I can imagine that there will be technical issues getting this implemented (client support, etc, etc). Perhaps splitting the description up into an editable part and a part non editable after rank can work without requiring massive changes everywhere.

Highly agree with both the initial proposal and what Okoratu mentioned.
All assets should receive the credit where credit is possible.

The only issue I have, asking artists for permission to include their official websites for promotion isn't a very feasible act. The results are heavily case by case dependant with the tendency to never get a response in the first place. I don't see any negativity associated with the act of promoting an artist's work, so asking for permission, while it is a nice gesture, seems to be a waste of efforts considering the previous point. If an artist is bothered having their work used they will act accordingly, at the very least promoting their work could be a saving grace to sway their initial impression.
However I do realize the underlying problem of making it appear as if artists are associated with this site by promoting them without consent, which I assume is the reason for including that phrase in the guideline.

It's a tough call, if imploring permission is mandatory then this guideline is better left unimplemented and people should find it in their own volition to include the artist's sources.

Forcing people to ask artists for permission to link to their stuff is a huge dealbreaker for me. There's so many potential issues with that that I think it's best to just be left as a suggestion.

Either ask before you map/upload anything at all (and naturally credit in description if the artist agrees), credit in description without asking, or don't do it at all.

I do like the motivation of this suggestion and I think making BNs aware of this can for sure help accomplishing this goal.

Human sense needs to be applied whether it makes sense to contact the artist - I feel like this rule is directed rather towards FA-esque kind of artists (who could be asked in beforehand if they are consenting, which I think they are otherwise why'd they be FA). Knowing that mapping everything else is still a grey-zone, there is not much input I can give.

Beatmap Submission Rules wrote:

Make sure you have permission to use any content involved in your beatmap. This includes songs, videos, hit sounds, graphics, and any other content that isn't your own creation. If you are unsure of where to find content that is free to use, we have a growing library of tracks available at the Featured Artist listing, all 100% licensed for use in osu!.

If a mapper has already asked for permission to use content involved in their beatmap (as they are expected to do) then it wouldn't be unreasonable to also ask the artist if they would like to have their work promoted as well. Therefore, if a mapper has not been able to contact the artist to confirm if they would like their work referenced in beatmap description or not, chances are, the mapper hasn't contacted the artist for permission to begin with.

I really like this proposal and I would encourage pushing it out as a new General Rule. I think guidelines would be too lenient and allow mappers the option to claim that they had attempted "exhaustively" to contact the artist for permission to promote their work, and been unsuccessful. Anyone saying "well, we tried contacting the artist but didn't receive a response" should probably reconsider submitting and ranking their map to begin with.

I think this proposal helps to address a serious liability assumption osu! has operated on: that mappers uploading content are assumed to have permission to upload such content. By checking if this is indeed true before ranking a beatmap, osu! staff will be able to do away with the issue of negligence on their part to check that maps are properly uploaded with permission. (Yes, it is the GMT and staff's job to check if content is uploaded with permission - when notified. This is a good chance to be adequately notified if this is added to the ranking procedure.)

You are not wrong and generally speaking I support the idea of requesting permission, however you can't deny that the amount of people that currently adhere to that procedure can be counted on one hand.
This would singlehandedly bottleneck the beatmapping process, mappers would get frustrated and in the end abandon the game altogether.
As much as it would be the right thing to do and enforce, I don't see the game holding up if a change like that happens. (at least not in its current state)

the reason why our game could grow up and have such an enormous scale today is mainly because how conveniently we can act in this grey (or black) area and how strong the propagation force of osu "gang" is

to be honest even 80% (years ago it was 90%) of the people in this game are "gamers", our game is literally feeded by them so i guess that is why we've never done anything really against them and make them unhappy

even i don't really think mons' post is 100% related to the topic but i do agree that he brought up an important point, that is we strictly forbidden any contents in the map that are not free to use to be submitted in our written rules but we pretended that it never exists for a long period of time

my suggestion is

1) either you delete/modify the rule mons posted before you implement your proporsal (as a rule/guideline or w/e) because just adding such a suggestion won't be able to solve the core problem of the contradiction between our submission rules and what we've done for years, or
2) just pretended nothing is happen and use your good persuade techniques to comfort any artists who feel offended or even made them fa (peppy stated that any artists who don't feel like to see that their contents are being used here without their permissions can always contact him) as what we've done for years, too

-

there's another radical option but i don't think you'll really do this (that is the optimal one for me, though) so i'll just post it here as a possible reference:
considering "gamers" would just keep harassing artists whose songs are made into a hyped osu map and potentially make more and more of them become angry (the large portion of them don't because we are lucky, not because that is not even a thing), which i believe staffs won't be happy to see, so i suggest that we can
3) delete all submitted and ranked maps without permission from original artists (you can just let those who've asked for permission send you an email in a certain period of time, so their maps can prevent from being deleted - then you can delete all maps that are non-fa + holders of which are failed to give permission from artists), that can also become a wonderful chance to rework the reward mechanism in this game, for now it means the whole pp system (that would be another story, though)

if we can't legitly tell every osu "gamer" what is the manner, then i think it'd be best for staffs to either just pretend not seeing them and let the game grow (cuz grey area never actually matters, right?) or give them a serious lesson that their inappropriate behaviors would pay, adding a perfunctory rule or suggestion won't really help

Ryuusei Aika wrote:

3) delete all submitted and ranked maps without permission from original artists (you can just let those who've asked for permission send you an email in a certain period of time, so their maps can prevent from being deleted - then you can delete all maps that are non-fa + holders of which are failed to give permission from artists), that can also become a wonderful chance to rework the reward mechanism in this game, for now it means the whole pp system (that would be another story, though)

I think that this would only take away some [some may be not enough word tho] of the players (about whose your post starts from) because some of them are even dedicated to get some sweet performance points and then all you gained just disappear. It's somekind of mechanism to discourage players (at least for who the numbers near pp is important) from playing.

Next what if the artist who at first wasn't supporting osu after some time he changes his mind and maybe becomes an Featured Artist? You can't really undelete the beatmap if it was already deleted. Even if someone has the beatmap we need to think about the leaderboards/pp already granted what is a lot of data to store. And storing them "just in case" is a bit non-sense isn't it?

Imo this may become a thing if number Featured Artists (and artists who are ok with osu) would increase to the state where maybe at minimum 80+% of whole Ranked Status would be FA (and artists who are ok with osu)

I know that you meant that as the radical option. Just wanted to show why it shouldn't be considered now.

Don't make this a rule have it as a website implementation instead. Have a database with artist names and links to their website which is managed by a metadata team regarding new additions, and then just add another button on a beatmap page that says "Artist's Website" or "Artist's Store" or w/e, literally just automates this rule and saves so much hassle since i don't think an artist wants 300 mappers asking them for permission.

Hydria wrote:

Don't make this a rule have it as a website implementation instead. Have a database with artist names and links to their website which is managed by a metadata team regarding new additions, and then just add another button on a beatmap page that says "Artist's Website" or "Artist's Store" or w/e, literally just automates this rule and saves so much hassle since i don't think an artist wants 300 mappers asking them for permission.

well said

I don’t think a new metadata team is necessary but Hydria’s idea is nice

Hydria wrote:

Don't make this a rule have it as a website implementation instead. Have a database with artist names and links to their website which is managed by a metadata team regarding new additions, and then just add another button on a beatmap page that says "Artist's Website" or "Artist's Store" or w/e, literally just automates this rule and saves so much hassle since i don't think an artist wants 300 mappers asking them for permission.

can totally agree with this. not sure if there would ever be a meta team for this sort of stuff but it would definitely save a lot of time and effort for people who just want to support the artist(s) and not have to look through a beatmap desc. to look for something like this.

This seems like a huge hassle, and a step in the "get the artist's permission, or don't map the song" direction which is technically what people are supposed to do, but very few do.

my thoughts on this are pretty much the same as when a similar thing was brought up about crediting bg art: https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/posts/6954288 -- crediting artists is not related to map standards, so making it a requirement is kind of weird for the ranking criteria i m o

idea is nice to artists, though doing it for old beatmaps is gonna be unrealistic unless there's dedicated people who step up to do it... yet there arent even people dedicated to genre setting on newly ranked maps, so i doubt itd happen discussion here about making a new metadata team for it is similarly dreamy/notgonnahappenunlesspeoplereallywantto-y

gonna archive for reasons above and because discussion isnt happening