User:Michig/Music related infoboxes-where did it all go so wrong?

The problem
Over the years, Wikipedia editors seem to have collectively lost the plot when it comes to music-related infoboxes. The musical artist one is generally ok, but the infoboxes for songs, singles and albums are a mess. Rather than fulfilling the correct role of an infobox, which is to summarise the key information from the article in an 'at a glance' format, more and more data has been shoehorned into these infoboxes and it has now got the point where in many articles there is considerably more information in the infobox than in the rest of the article.

So what exactly should an infobox be used for? According to Infobox they provide
 * "A quick and convenient summary of the key facts about a subject, in a consistent format and layout"

This is reinforced in Manual of Style/Infoboxes, which also atates:
 * " The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content."

This begs the question, what are the key facts about a song, track, single, EP, or album?

First a few definitions:
 * A song is a discrete composition, usually with music and words.
 * A track is an individual recording of a song
 * A single is a release of a track, usually accompanied with one or more other tracks, traditionally in physical format, often with added artwork. Singles are generally referred to using the name of the lead track or 'A-side'
 * An EP was originally a release using the same physical format as a single, but with more tracks, achieved by 'extending' the format by using narrower grooves and/or a slower playing speed. More recently it is used for a release comprising less tracks than would be considered an album (there are no clear distinctions). An EP usually has a title, which is separate to the track titles
 * An album is a collection of tracks, usually longer than an EP, and with a separate title.

These are pretty standard definitions used my most reliable sources, although colloquial use muddles these, but we're writing an encyclopedia, not a fansite, so we should stick to correct terminology for clarity. So what are the key facts about each of these?

Songs
A song may or may not be recorded. It may be recorded by a single artists, many artists, or many times by the same artist.

Key facts are:
 * Name
 * Composer(s)
 * Date/year of composition
 * First recorded by
 * Popularised by

Things that make no sense at all for songs are:
 * Length - typically different for each recording and meaningless if the song has not been recorded
 * Release on which it appeared - again, could be many
 * Record label - a recording of a song (track) may appear on a single, EP, or album, for which record label will be relevant, but not here
 * Producer - not relevant to the song itself

Tracks
Some of the key fields for a song will also apply to a track:
 * Name
 * Artist(s)
 * Composer(s)
 * Release on which it appeared

Plus:
 * Length
 * Recording date

With possible secondary facts:
 * Producer
 * Musicians
 * Studio

Singles
Given that a single has a definite release and will generally include more than one track, the key facts are:
 * Name - usually the same as the name of the A-side or lead track (but not always - some singles have a separate title)
 * Artist(s)
 * Composer(s)
 * Producer
 * Record label
 * Catalogue number
 * Release date
 * Format(s)
 * Tracks

With secondary facts:
 * Total length
 * Producer
 * Recording date
 * Musicians
 * Studio
 * Artwork credit

EPs and albums
Essentially the same information as the main difference is the number of tracks, so key fields are:
 * Title
 * Artist
 * Year/date of release
 * Tracks
 * Record label
 * Catalogue number
 * Producer
 * Studio
 * Recording date
 * Musicians

For heaven's sake, the names of the tracks on the album are far more 'key' than what the previous or next album by the artist were, the studio, producer, or details of singles with tracks taken from the album.

What we have now
Take a look at our existing infoboxes, which muddle songs, tracks and singles over two different infoboxes, and the fields in them and it should be clear that not only are they omitting data that really should be classed as key facts about these topics, but also include lots of non-essential detail that doesn't belong in an infobox.

The song infobox includes such ludicrous fields as:
 * A-side
 * Length
 * Tracks
 * prev
 * next

The single and album infoboxes are reasonably good and do seem geared to actual singles, EPs and albums, but perhaps don't focus on the key information and contain a lot of fields that don't need to be there.

So why have we got to this state?
 * 1) Some editors don't appreciate (or don't really care) what infoboxes are for
 * 2) Some editors don't know the difference between a song, a track, and a single
 * 3) Some editors have little or no knowledge of the decades of history of music releases
 * 4) Discussions are dominated by a small number of editors with entrenched positions
 * 5) We also have problems with articles that have led to this position

Related article problems

 * We are not very good at writing about one thing in these articles. We have articles about songs that include details of several versions of that song, when in a lot of cases what they are discussing are the singles, EPs, etc. that contained the song, and not the song itself. A good article about a song should start with the song itself - who wrote it and when, background to the composition etc., but many jump in with detail about a single, when it was released, how high it charted, etc.. An article about a song should include an overview of all significant recordings of that song, but detail of separate releases and their associated tracklistings belongs elsewhere. An article about a single should include only information about that single, and not about other singles that featured the song recorded as the A-side. A song article should use a the song infobox with sensible fields. American Pie is a ridiculous article. It should be about the song, with an overview of the recordings of that song. Most of the content there isn't about the song itself, it's about the single by Madonna. This should be in a separate article. Same with Perfect Day - three topics there.
 * An article about a single (which many articles with the '(song)' disambiguation really are) should be about that single. These should use the single infobox.
 * Articles about album tracks should focus on that track, not every version of the song that was recorded. These should use an appropriate infobox, which is neither of the existing song or single infoboxes.
 * Our discography articles are generally poor. For really good, worthwhile discographies see Martin Strong's books or the many books containing detailed discographies of individual artists. These don't just list the titles of albums and singles with no details of the tracks, they include track details for all the releases - without details of the tracks, discographies are only really useful as a set of links to other articles, hence the other problem we have, which is thousands of articles with little more than an infobox and a tracklisting, largely because we don't tend to include tracklistings in discography articles; Make discographies better and more complete and these separate articles can just disappear (with the added benefit of significant reduction in PRODs and AfDs).

Would it work if we changed?
So if we were to stop combining singles by several artists into a single article, what problem would that cause? Well none really. If there is sufficient content on one of these singles for a standalone article (beyond what we would have in a good discography article) then they should have articles, and those articles should be disambiguated with '(single)', not '(song)' (describing "American Pie" as a '(Madonna song)' would be stupid). If there is not sufficient content for a standalone article, the content should be summarised in an article on the artist's discography or the associated album. Lumping details of three singles by different artists in one article is awful and makes the encyclopedia look very amateurish.