[mb-style] How to handle band/artist name changes

[Age Bosma]

Hi,

I know this discussion has been raised before but there wasn't much 
response on the matter at that time.

There aren't clear guidelines about how to store releases when bands or 
artists have changed their name.

A classic example would be Prince [1] with the following names:
- Prince
- T.A.F.K.A.P.
- Symbol

Currently all releases are stored under one and the same name: Prince.
In a way this makes sense since there's clearly talk about one and the 
same artist. On the other hand, don't we want to know which release was 
released under which name?

Yesterday I made an edit [2] to merge two bands because they are exactly 
the same. The band DragonForce [3] used to be called DragonHeart [4]. 
They released one demo under their old name and changed the name 
afterwards to prevent confusion with a different band called 
DragonHeart. In this case there's nothing more to it, it's one and the 
same band. They even mention their first demo on the DragonForce website 
with a note that it was released under their old name DragonHeart.
If the Prince situation is an excepted approach then the DragonForce -> 
DragonHeart situation should apply here as well, no?

This approach, however, isn't an ideal solution:
- As Aaron Cooper stated before: "When a band changes their name, in the 
MB system now we lose all connection with their previous releases under 
an old name because we are only viewing one artist's page."
- Simply adding previous names as an alias is wrong since the aliases 
aren't meant for this purpose.
- Adding one and the same release to both artists is a waste of time and 
resources. Not to mention that this would result in having to maintain 
both releases separately.

Keeping both artist names with an AR between the two of them, specifying 
the begin and end period, will offer us the most flexibility.
Having both artists in the db allows us to do one of the following:
1. File all releases under the most recent name. This will result in a 
'dummy' artist in case of the previous names.
2. File each release under the name it was released under. This gives us 
the distinction we want but the most recent name will not list all 
releases people might expect under that name.

Both problems can be addressed by implementing different handling views:
Option 1:
- Display releases which fall in a specific name period under that name 
automatically.
Option 2:
- Display all releases under the most recent name.

Views for both options:
- List previous name(s) when viewing the most recent name.
- Mention most recent name when viewing a previous name.
- Mention the previous name under which it was released when viewing a 
release.

There will probably be more complex name change issues at some stage 
where e.g. an artist changes his name and later changes back to a 
previous name again. To overcome this:
Option 1:
- Offer multiple start and end dates for a specific name.
- Or create duplicate artist names but this will become a mess to maintain.
Option 2:
- Multiple start and end dates can be offered but it isn't really required.

Moving from the situation we have now to a perfect solution will require 
a lot of code changes and thus it will take a long time before it's 
done. Nevertheless I think it's important to at least establish some 
form of agreement/guideline on how we should handle things at this stage 
and/or how on a later stage.

1. We could start creating multiple artist, file all releases under the 
most recent name and creating AR's between the most recent name and the 
previous ones. As a result we will have what appears to be dummy artists 
for the time being. It will probably also require much more code changes 
and take more resources.

2. We could keep duplicate artists, file each release under each 
separate artist name and create an AR to the most recent name. On a 
later stage this could result in less (resource taking) code changes. 
Instead of checking for each possible release under the most recent name 
when viewing a previous name you now only have to check for all releases 
under all previous names when viewing the most recent one. This method 
seems to me to be the most db semantically correct as well.

Yours,

Age (Prodoc)


[1] http://musicbrainz.org/show/artist/aliases.html?artistid=153
[2] http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=5706428
[3] http://musicbrainz.org/artist/ef58d4c9-0d40-42ba-bfab-9186c1483edd.html
[4] http://musicbrainz.org/artist/757b9d20-1504-4d1b-ba52-575fdd2ac56f.html