Track Artist

In Pop/Rock there is usually a single performer or band who is credited. They are often the composer of the song as well but if they are not the details of the writer are not usually so important, the artist credits on the release itself make it clear who should be credited for each track.

In Classical music, usually various performers, an orchestra or choir, a conductor and a composer are all credited. This means we potentially have a long list of people credited for each track, and we don’t have an accepted order they should be added in. Previously the Composer was used for the Artist field, but as the Composer field is better supported in most players (such as iTunes) we usually we no longer need to add the composer to both the Artist and Composer field. In fact doesn't really make sense to add the Composer to the Artist field any longer for Classical music because often the music was composed many years ago and they were not involved in the actual recording in any way.

The default for SongKong is to store the , Performers, Ensemble/Choir/Orchestra and Conductor in that order, but we offer different masks for different uses.

If you have a particular interest in MusicBrainz, we also offer the option to use the MusicBrainz artist fields directly. For Classical music the MusicBrainz database typically stores the Composer in their MusicBrainz Track Artist Credit field and the performers and conductor in the MusicBrainz Recording Artist Credit field but this is not always applied consistently.