Style Guide

The following are the general style guidelines for the IMVDb database.

Digital Music Style Guide

IMVDb follows the musicbiz.org music metadata style guide. This publication is available as a pdf download on musicbiz.org, and provides guidelines on artist naming and other common music items. It covers the vast majority of the music database side of IMVDb.

Note: We are still in the process of implementing the metadata style guide's rules on compound names.

Below are style guide specifications that are not covered in the music metadata guide, and are unique to IMVDb.

Version Names

Submitted music videos have a place for the song name as well as a Version Name. The version name is intended to identify a music video in the case of multiple versions. Any information regarding the track name (such as "(Remix)") should be added to the song title, and not included in the version name field.

Version names

Featured Artists

Featured artist should not be listed in the song title text, but instead added as a featured artist to the song. This allows the database to link the artist to the track/video as the featured artist and listed in their videography.

Medley Video

Although rare, medley music videos are occasionally produced, even if the tracks do not appear together in medley format in any releases. In this case, each song in the medley can be listed in the song field, using the metadata style guide's specifications for listing medley songs.

Directors Cuts

Directors cuts or re-edits should be listed as altenative sources for a video, and will be given the ability to be marked as directors cuts in the future. Directors cuts should not be added as separate videos.