Hall & Oates can't file jointly under the current system.

July 7, 2010 5:59 PM

Mefi Music pony request: Could it be possible for a song collaboration to be posted under two or more usernames?

I just posted a song that another user wrote and sang. He then sent it to me, and I overdubbed some more instruments and mixed it. Right now, if you look at blue bar's list of Mefi Music posts, this song doesn't appear. It only appears under my list.

It seems too bad that, considering that he is the song's author, there is no way that someone in the future could listen to one of his other songs, decide that they want to hear his other offerings, and not be able to come across this one.

Would it be possible to create a joint post so that the song would be somehow cross-indexed?

posted by umbú to Feature Requests at 5:59 PM (10 comments total)

Oops. That second to last sentence is a crappy one. Here's a slightly better one:

Right now, there is no way that someone in the future could listen to one of his other songs, decide that they want to hear his other offerings, and click through to this one.
posted by umbú at 6:01 PM on July 7, 2010

That sounds to me like a great idea! (And perhaps a technical nightmare to implement...)
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 6:18 PM on July 7, 2010

You can solve half the problem by linking to their profile in the description.

This is not an easy thing to implement because changing from a 1:1 to 1:many relationship means you can no longer have a username column in the posts table, you must add a whole new table which links usernames to post IDs, which means that you have to dig around the code and find all the queries that reference username and modify them to add an additional JOIN. You also have to write a script or program to move all the old usernames into the new table.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:48 PM on July 7, 2010

I have no idea how the system is currently structured, but I would imagine that having a spot for a collaborator in the "posted by" line isn't possible. That still would leave the song as technically/officially/etc.-illy under 1 username, but at least it would be linked.

Rhomboid sparked this in my brain. I know if someone was crazy enough to work with me I wouldn't have a problem with just a mention in the description.
posted by theichibun at 7:29 PM on July 7, 2010

In these cases, we almost always mention each other in the description. It's the cross-listing that would be nice, so that it would show up on the other person's list and embedded mp3 player.
posted by umbú at 7:37 PM on July 7, 2010

Could always post it twice? It's not ideal, but it is a workaround.
posted by Caduceus at 8:24 PM on July 7, 2010

I had the same thought as Caduceus, but refrained from saying it due to the clutter it would cause.
posted by mannequito at 8:33 PM on July 7, 2010

Yeah, honestly I like the idea but it seems like it would be kind of a bear to implement in the pursuit of a feature we wouldn't be using all that often and which isn't really core to how Music works. It's kind a bummer to have to pick one person to get to do the post, but for most purposes it works pretty well and being explicit about involvement in the writeup seems like the most important thing anyway.

If we ever do something more ambitious without how metadata for songs is handled on Music, this would be something to consider factoring in, certainly.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:15 PM on July 7, 2010

Add the usernames as tags? Not ideal as solo performers are unlikely to add just themselves as a tag (automagically add the poster themselves? have a separate tag entry field for collaborators?) - plus backtagging will be a pain and there might be collisions (how do you distinguish a song by cortex from a song about cortex?), but it might be Good Enough.
posted by Electric Dragon at 1:34 AM on July 8, 2010

That makes sense. Too bad it wouldn't be easy to implement. Thanks for mulling it over, though.
posted by umbú at 10:12 AM on July 8, 2010