funkwhale

Funkwhale has some issues handling artists, particularly in classical music.

I love the idea of Funkwhale, and I have been trying it out for a little while now. I've tried uploading Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, but I stumbled across a few issues, particularly regarding artists.

The first thing that I noticed was that artists separated by commas get merged into one "artist". In my case, "Sviatoslav Richter, Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra" was registered as one single person. I'm guessing there is some workaround for this, but since comma separation is a widely used format, you're bound to get a lot of double artists.

Another thing I noticed was that composers and conductors don't get registered as artists. That is quite annoying, because the composer is the one you care the most about in classical music. Even when I go into the track details, I see no Sergei Rachmaninov or Stanisław Wisłocki, even though they're clearly tagged in the files.

Then, a smaller issue is different spellings for the same name: JS Bach and Johann Sebastian Bach are shown as two different artists. I understand that it is difficult to prevent given the decentralised nature of Funkwhale, but some form of reminder to keep it to some standard would be nice (perhaps the one used on Discogs).

Overall, Funkwhale is a great idea and I am going to use the hell out of it, but it needs some standarisation and support for multiple contributors.

@funkwhale @funkwhale #funkwhale