[mb-style] Band name changes (was [mb-devel] Panic! at the Disco)

[Lauri Watts]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Chris B <chris at whenironsattack.com> wrote:
>  >
>  > If it's so simple to determine which one is 'the most popular' to
>  >  merge them into,
>  >  it's equally simple to use that same one to base the AR's from.
>
>  that's what i said in the bit you cut, but i would have thought it
>  doesn't make sense from the AR phrase point of view. Eg, "[Radiohead]
>  is (was?) also known as [On A Friday] from 1986 to 1991" but then
>  "Radiohead" was not formed till 1991, so semantically this seems
>  'weird' to me. maybe others don't see a problem

So don't relate them, if it doesn't make sense.

>  >  >  i don't buy that we should 'prepare' the data for NGS - isn't that the
>  >  >  reason we're having NGS in the first place? because such an 'accurate'
>  >  >  DB structure is unsuitable for our needs without major DB and display
>  >  >  changes. obviously there's going to be significant editing work across
>  >  >  the board once we go to NGS from our current 'amended' data anyway...
>  >  >
>  >
>  > That it helps sort things out in the future when we can have them on one page
>  >  is just an extra benefit.
>  >
>  >  The point is, many users do not want their albums released and widely available
>  >  for many years under one artist name to be automatically changed to
>  >  the other.
>
>  I do. "many" isn't "most" :)

>  obviously i don't speak for the majority, but for me it would make MBz
>  worse for tagging and navigating if it was going to split up the
>  supremes, or prince, or whoever. i already have to manually retag my
>  wendy/walter carlos because certain editors feel that someone changing
>  their sex makes head nor tail to their musical discography *ducks* :)
>

Heh, BTW, I gotta cop to having just taken a painkiller when I wrote
that last mail: Neither Wendy nor Walter Carlos are a band, to my
knowledge at least.

But I don't think the sex change is really the issue here.  It's that
a lot of us bought (or in my case inherited) the original Clockwork
Orange vinyls, under the name Walter Carlos, and don't own the later
CD issues under the name Wendy.  On this one, I'm willing to take the
artists intention on board, and use Wendy, but to use a more recent
example from my first post, some people get absolutely livid when
their rip of Covenant's Nexus Polaris with 'COVENANT' in giant letters
on the front, shows up under 'The Kovenant' in their itunes, when they
bought the original not the later (renamed band) reissue.

>  "To be used in cases where a band changed their name only, between
>   releases, with no accompanying lineup or musical style change.  This
>   AR should only be used for completely consistent name changes, where
>   all releases for a given period used one name, and the change to the
>   new name was entire."
>
>  that is, if an artist changes their name from one release to another,
>  no matter how small the change, we create a new artist. that i don't
>  agree with. i think one artist page should equal one artist. if an
>  artist changes their name to create a new body of work (eg, like
>  warsaw > joy division > new order) then fine...split away. whether
>  that needs a new AR or not i don't know. i don't see those as 'name
>  changes' but rather the same guys (err, minus one for new order)
>  performing as a different group, so ostensibly the old performance AR
>  seems to deal with that scenario.

I never meant to say 'we must use this' and 'always split the
discography', sorry if I wasn't clear there, but rather to use the
same common sense rules we (mostly) manage to apply to performance
names.  Put in place something we _can_ use, when it's sensible only.
New Order becoming Joy Division doesn't seem like 'the same band' to
anyone who actually is a fan of them, so we don't see the same kind of
arguments about them.

And the wording was only a start to discussion, Brian already pointed
out quite correctly that lineup changes happen all the time in bands
anyway, between releases, and the answer to whether the result is the
same band or not, depends on the band. This is nothing we could apply
unilaterally and arbitrarily.  I'd be quite pleased to see it massaged
into something that is clear and concise and not confusing.  And to
come up with some examples to put on the same artist with different
names wiki page to help people understand what 'it makes sense' means.

I'm one of those stuck in the middle people here: I'd dearly like to
see the discographies united on one page for reference purposes,
nothing would make me happier, but I'd also like to see my music
tagged with the artist name that actually released _the album I have_,
not the name they changed to ten years later.

At present, for people, that means we keep performance names apart,
but for bands we don't, which just doesn't make sense to me.

It occurs to me, that they're on different pages now is something that
maybe could be fixed/handled in the SOC rewrite, if not waiting until
NGS actually gets here.  But only if they're related somehow in the
first place.

-- 
Lauri Watts