Track Format

Track entries are stored in album files; after the album header section, use Track: (Track Name) to start a track section.

tl;dr

• Track: track name
• Duration: track listening duration
• Commentary: commentary from track artists and others related
• Lyrics: vocal lyrics
• Original Date: date of original release for tracks that were made available prior to album release (and other special cases)

details

• Track: track name
  • Guideline: Use the formatting of the album release on Bandcamp; else, album release on another platform; else, the earliest or most "official" (e.g. announced) release.
• Duration: track listening duration
  • e.g. 0:57 (57 seconds)
  • e.g. 4:13 (4 minutes, 13 seconds)
  • e.g. 3:05:20 (3 hours, 5 minutes, 20 seconds)
  • If this isn't provided, track listings will display as (_:__), and the track will be treated as zero seconds long (no duration).
  • Guideline: If a track doesn't have a clear-cut duration (e.g. dynamic loops ripped from old console games), it's probably best to leave it as unset.
    • [yes I know that means a number of external media tracks should have their durations zeroed]
• Commentary: commentary from track artists and others related
  • See (TODO) Commentary Format
• Lyrics: vocal lyrics
  • Guideline: Include the whole lyrics verbosely, instead of shorthands like "[2x Chorus]".
  • Guideline: As much as vocal lines can be discerned from instruments, try to transcribe everything, including non-"music" lines, quiet vocals, optionally echo effects, etc
  • Guideline: Just ask Niklink for decision making on any lyrics, he's to credit for pretty much all lyrics present on the site ATM lol
• Original Date: date of original release for tracks that were made available prior to album release (and other special cases)
  • Guideline: This is pretty much exclusively for organization purpose on artist pages, where it doesn't make sense to chronologically position a track at one time when it was first released years earlier. At this point, it's mostly defunct, since we have the "AKA" (re-release) feature for cataloguing specific releases (which displays more cleanly in the artist chronology, too). However, it may still be used in certain cases where there isn't another album release that has the relevant date.
    • For example, compilation album The Funk McLovin Homestuck Experience uses Original Date for each track's earlier release on YouTube.
    • The 2019 re-release of One Year Older includes a bonus track, it's good to see you again. Rather than create a whole new album with basically the same structure, an additional group ("2019 release") was added with the single new track, which is Original Date'd as a later date than the rest of the album, placing it correctly in Erik Scheele's track chronology.