Quick question about live releases - how does to the editorial team decide which releases end up in the albums section of the discography and which ones end up the compilations section. Is it purely down to each editor's preference or is there a set critieria to it?
Interesting take. i wonder if it leads to regular discussions amongst the team about whether a release qualifies as part of the act's 'true catelog'.
Another database I know of only treats live albums as part of the main discography when the release contains at least 50% new/unreleased songs in the tracklisting. So a release like MC5's Kick Out the Jams would be in the albums section but something like Taking Head's The Name of This Band Is... wouldn't. As you can imagine, it makes spotting one in their main albums section quite the rarity.
When you're talking about "at least 50% new/unreleased songs", I think you're already limiting to albums on which all songs were recorded live. (Allmusic flags a recording as "live" if at least 50% of its songs were recorded live, regardless of whether those songs have been previously released and whether the rest were recorded in the studio.) I'm sure you're aware, but Advanced Album Search has a recording type for "live recordings".
It wasn't really a suggestion to AllMusic on how to handle their own live releases. More to provide a interesting contrast to another music database without a live releases section. There are merits in both approaches.
Good question with a fuzzy answer:
Usually if more than half of the content on the album is a live recording, it will usually be flagged as live.
There are some legendary live albums (Cheap Trick's At Budokan, The Who's Live at Leeds, Frampton Comes Alive) that become part of the legacy of the artist's primary discography and end up not falling into the "Compilations" bucket, since they seem like a foundational part of the artist's output.
Additionally, many live jazz albums may fall into the Main Albums bucket if they feel like the intent of the recording is a representative "main" album, but a one-off session on a budget label may be shuffled off to the Compilations section.
Lastly, there are occasionally some budget line CDs or digital releases that come in without very much information at all and may land in the "Albums" section by default. Like at the bottom of the Pearl Jam discography, there are currently two albums that probably don't belong there. We try to clean those out.
The objective of the "Albums" section of the discography is to try to capture the primary works that the artist recorded -- the ones that seem like the true catalog of recorded works. Sometimes a live album fits that criteria and ends up in that bucket.
Thanks for the detailed response. Funny thing - the question was also kinda answered in the new article about Pearl Jam's official bootlegs:
"As an archival research site, we try to help users find albums within an artist's discography and we break them into what we consider to be Main Albums, Compilations (which ends up being more like any full-length album that isn't a core part of the band's main album output), and then things like Singles and EPs, Videos and "Other" (which is usually like interview discs and bootlegs, etc).
Live albums usually end up in the second bucket of Compilations, partially because they are usually a collection of songs from different eras but also so they don't clutter up the main albums section of the discography (the Pearl Jam live releases are a good example), but there are some albums like The Who's Live at Leeds or Kiss Alive! or Cheap Trick At Budokan that end up transcending the "let's fulfill our contract by putting out a live record" type of throwaway releases."
That author must really know what he's talking about.
Yup, seems like a knowledgable guy with a real passion for his work. Look forward to reading whatever article he's working on next.
