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[Proposal] Create a new category called "Guest Artists"
To my understanding, the Featured Artist listing has acted as a repository for (almost) all the tracks that are licensed for usage on osu!
In 2023, the World Cups team commissioned music from kanemiko, Halv, and kuro, none of whom were FA at the time, and there was no further intention to license more music from them. As a compromise to ensure that these original songs were documented on the website, the decision at the time was to assign them FA status, but leave them with a stub listing with no newspost. Should more tracks be licensed in the future, a newspost would be created - this has been the process moving forward.
Currently we have 9 stub listings on the website, and (under the current process) this number is only going to increase as the World Cups continue to commission music from new artists:
9 artists is a small minority (~2% of artists) though technically it could be higher - there are many artists who were involved in collaborations but their tracks are only listed once under a single collaborating artist. The current process does not sit right with me as this is an inconsistent treatment of artists - below are three different examples to highlight this inconsistency (probably too much detail, but not exhaustive):
Example 1: D-D-Dice vs. siromaru - Catch the Glory The track is listed under siromaru only, who was already an FA prior to the release of the song. D-D-Dice did not get a listing (it was not seen as necessary at the time).
Example 2: Halv vs. kuro - Evreka Neither artist was FA prior to the release of the song. A stub listing was created for both Halv and kuro.
Example 3: "Quarkee & Yuuni - Fabricated Exaltation" Neither artist was FA prior to the release of the song. A stub listing was created for Yuuni, but not Quarkee. Why is the treatment different to Example 2?
Of the above 6 artists, 4 of them have been assigned FA status, but only 1 of them (siromaru) ever received a newspost. The current process has the FA title sometimes functioning as a label of convenience, which I don't think is a good look.
As a proposed solution, I would like to see the introduction of a "Guest Artist" category. Essentially, artists who produce "one-off" tournament originals could be assigned GA status. Should more of their tracks be licensed in the future, a newspost could announce their transition to FA status. These are the benefits I see:
- It would provide a clear separation and explanation of why there are full and stub listings.
- We would be able to list all contributing artists to ensure they are all properly credited (without bloating the existing FA listing).
- It would also provide an avenue for community osu! originals to be licensed, with a perceived lower bar of entry (potentially over 500 songs and counting)
Here are two ways on how you could implement it:
Option 1:
Option 2
~~Guest Artist (GA) would be the ideal terminology, because G is the letter that follows F...that's the whole case right there~~
I like the idea of clarifying intent here because it is a bit confusing/inconsistent. but I don't know if this makes it a lot better..?
from my (public-only basically) perspective on FA, the only difference I can tell between FA and your coined "GA" is that GA didn't get a news post. otherwise, they look just like FA to me -- and unless I'd been following all FA news posts, I wouldn't know who was announced like that or not. it feels like this might be more of an internal label than something that makes sense for users to categorize by.
I would find it weird if for example Our Stolen Theory is not considered a guest artist despite probably just having this one track and nothing more going forward, while Halv is considered a guest despite having a mix of original/non-original tracks already, and a well put together page just like any other FA.
as for your 3 collab examples, I think they should just be fixed per your (implied) suggestions, it doesn't have to be related to a new website feature
