This question comes up from time to time, with some desire towards coming up with a standard guideline to follow, but I've never been able to pose one that wouldn't restrict our flexibility. By the same token, I don't want to be as flexible as Discogs. My philosophy goes something like this:
- For solid game/anime composers or arrangers, you can submit "works" albums that are outside our scope if you think they are of interest.
- To prevent clutter on the artist pages, be mindful of the ratio of in-scope to out-of-scope albums. We don't want someone with 3 VGM credits to have 12 works albums. I don't have an exact number to give for a ratio, but I hope that some common sense is used.
- The standard is much higher for performers. I don't really want solo albums to be submitted for a vocalist that was on a few animes. (Plus, vocal albums are a lot of work for staff to fix if they aren't done carefully.) You pretty much need to be game-related on the level of I've Sound to merit some works albums.
- Doujin circles who release albums at Comiket are generally an exception to these guidelines; we are much more lenient there. However, artists who release albums at M3 are not. We cover comiket fairly closely, but we only cover game/anime music at M3.
- If you submit a works album and do a poor job (incomplete or wrong information), staff is free to reject the album at their discretion. I don't want to waste limited time on something that isn't our focus.
- Original instrumental music is of higher interest here than pop vocals, so those albums should take higher priority for 'works' submissions than albums full of standard-fare vocals or cover-song arrangements.