Artist changed their name, how do I tag their release?

MusicBrainz Style
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MIZU - MusicBrainz is “the artist formerly known as Issei Herr”. They released Release group “Distant Intervals” by Issei Herr - MusicBrainz when they were still called Issei Herr, but it’s now distributed under the new name: Distant Intervals | MIZU You can see that the cover art changed to reflect the new name as well.

What’s the most sensible way to tag this? Create a new release (with identical release date, as shown on Bandcamp)? Or update the previous release? Thanks!

PS: I tried asking this question in the IRC channel yesterday, but is it possible that the Matrix bridge is not working? I didn’t find my question in the public logs, and I didn’t receive any messages.

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I think the bridge to libera is down for quite a while, yes.

Normally we do that with a second release, yes - the release date is more questionable, technically it should probably be the date the name change happened :slight_smile:

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Ah, good to know! I don’t know when the name change happened. The bandcamp link still mentions the original release date… I will create a second release with an identical date, maybe it can be cleaned up later.

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No, just leave the date empty if you don’t know.

“If in doubt, leave it out”

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But Distant Intervals | MIZU clearly says “released April 7, 2023”.

I also wonder what to do about the recordings themselves? Currently release and recording artists differ, so Release “Distant Intervals” by MIZU - MusicBrainz says so for each recording.

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That looks like it’s just copied from the original Issei Herr version – see https://web.archive.org/web/20230418210955/https://isseiherr.bandcamp.com/album/distant-intervals.

The MIZU version’s release date should correspond to whenever that version was first posted. All that can be determined from https://web.archive.org/web/20230928142606/https://iammizu.bandcamp.com/album/distant-intervals is that it was on or before September 28, so the current value of “2023” seems reasonable.

https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Release#Date:

For digital music, note that online platforms often do not display release dates, or will display the release date from an earlier physical release instead (which may sometimes be even earlier than the date the platform itself was launched). In cases where you are not certain that a release date is correct, it’s better to not enter a date at all, or to indicate it in the annotation only while listing your misgivings about it.

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since the Bandcamp artist name and URL changed, I don’t believe that change would be reflected in the release date on Bandcamp (nor the published or modified date, both of which are in the page source). that said, you could probably get a clue from that modified date, since they changed the name in the description and album credits. does November 20th seem reasonable for the name change?

image

(dates exposed via a userscript, Bandcamp: Show publish date)

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The most relevant change is the cover art. That happened way before November:
Wed, 20 Sep 2023 15:42:33 GMT according to Last-Modified HTTP header for the image.

Also correlates nicely with TralbumData.current.mod_date: '20 Sep 2023 15:44:01 GMT'

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I’m surprised and impressed by how much attention to detail you all pay in answering this question. :slight_smile:

This closely matches a tweet from Sep 21: https://nitter.cz/iamMIZU/status/1704877496552853810#m

The old name may be a dead name, but I’m not sure. I’m still trying to figure out whether recording & release group artist name should be changed

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