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

[Chris Bransden]

On 04/10/06, Lauri Watts <krazykiwi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/4/06, Noa Groveman <easterlingman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This matter is complicated by the fact that many artists intentionally
> > release works under different performance names, usually when they are
> > legally required to do so (because of a label contract) but sometimes for
> > other reasons.  I've always been of the opinion that the name of the MB
>
> There are plenty of artists who are releasing intentionally under
> multiple names at the same time.  Most of electronica comes under
> this, but also people like Elin Ruth/Elin Sigvardsson who are the same
> person, but she uses one name within Sweden and the other outside it.
> Actually, a couple of us just fixed up one case where one single album
> had four releases in three countries, with three different track
> listings, two of which are as a solo album, (artist with backing band)
> and two  as belonging to the band.  Likely because while the solo
> artist is a superstar at home, he's not well known overseas, so there
> wasn't any "goodwill" value releasing specifically under his name.
>
> I wonder if Noa's idea of simply being able to display all performance
> names isn't the best one.  Prince for instance, could be separated out
> into the different names he's used, depending on what's on the cover,
> and all linked with "Performed as..." AR's, covering the appropriate
> dates.  That takes someone very familiar with the artist in question's
> discography, not just to do the initial breaking up, but to stay on
> top of new additions and attempts to
>
> Basically it's easy enough to capture the data already, but it's
> probably not being displayed in the optimal manner.

i think the best argument for unifying artist names *where
appropriate* (eg, not for true aliases/regional variations/other??),
is that MP3 software and players are largely ordered by artist name.

if i used the specific artist name used on all the Silver Mt Zion
releases (http://www.discogs.com/artist/A+Silver+Mt.+Zion), their
discography would be scattered across my itunes and ipod. to listen to
all the ASMZ albums at once, i would have to create a playlist.

it would be muchos cool if all the performance names were grouped on
the server (solving display issue), and that the grouping name (eg, "A
Silver Mt. Zion") could be used by the tagger (or at least, the user
could chose it, rather than the album specific peformance name).