This seems wrong to me. Most labels do not list a band’s indie work on their discography page, even when the band never changed their name at all. Do we have to separate these MB Artists since the label thinks their indie work is a separate project from their work done under contract with the major?
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I’ve never heard of ‘On a Friday’, and have never heard of their albums being considered ‘Radiohead’ albums. So I’ll check them out, thanks… but that seems like two separate projects to me 
Even if the distinction is a nebulous ‘before fame/after fame’ situation.
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So you don’t think it’s true that EMI signed “On a Friday” and told them to change their name? How are they a different project?
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Putting the label aside for a second, if Radiohead really wanted people to check out their ‘On a Friday’ album then it’s unlikely that I wouldn’t have heard of it to be honest.
The question for me isn’t just why they changed their name, but if there’s a clean break between projects, and what the artist intent is. I’ll be curious to see if the sound changed.
Edit: hah, it sounds nothing like Radiohead, it’s pretty straight up (not bad) rock, but they are more like demos (on cassette too) than albums, and are identified as such on sites where the discography is merged.
That makes much more sense to me - I can’t say that I care much if the demo category in Radiohead has this in it. If we are keeping them as albums I would definitely leave them separate. There was clearly a huge jump in sound, whether that came from the label or the band.
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MB respects Artist’s Intent for all kinds of things. We should also respect the way they see their past. Radiohead is a different band to On A Friday. They don’t list their old school boy project on their website. MB should not force two disconnected discographies together. That’s one of the reasons this relationship was created.
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Yeah, I actually explicitly checked to make sure the Radiohead discography on their website (which has a billion rarities and whatnot) does not include pre-name-change things, so it’s clearly considered its own different project. That’s the kind of checking I’d expect before this relationship is used.
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What about when the band didn’t change their name, but they exclude their indie work from their discography page? Are those separate projects too?
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Hmm and there are several artists that I know for whom you will find only partial discographies on each one of their subsequent official label pages.
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They would have to live with their early deeds 
But I think it’s a fitting example for the “rename” relationship.
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I don’t think anyone’s saying that leaving stuff off a website is reason for a split.
I think what Reosarevok was saying is that this band lists their early releases, but leaves out everything from their prior project in a clear cut-off. It’s not that it’s not on the website, it’s that there seems to be an indication of artist intent (very murky, but something we’re used to trying to figure out)
Have you listened to the two artists btw?
Edit: have a browse of their site too, which is described as “An official online resource containing everything we, Radiohead, have ever done, more or less”
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I think there’s an important distinction to be made here between the artist’s historic intent, (i.e. what they intended at the time they made a release), and their current intent (how they want their history recorded/forgotten). Musicbrainz has a much less clear precedent for following artist intent when it comes to the latter.
For this specific Radiohead example, I’d think if we can find documentation of what they were thinking/saying at the time of the name change (an interview from the time would be an ideal source), that should take precedence over what they’re thinking/saying now.
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I think for Radiohead there is plenty out there to say “That was the bad we had at school” and very understandable to disconnect with it when they went professional. Similar line up does not mean same band.
Read any history on the band and it will tell you their first album was Pablo Honey. There may be a chapter to say some of them played together at school, but that book will not try and tell you those cassettes they handed out to fans are Radiohead’s first release.
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Serious question: Why do so many sources say Radiohead was formed in 1985?
https://www.google.com/search?q=radiohead+1985
Do they mention a formation date on their official website(s)?
The best I can find is this biography that “Radiohead” posted to Spotify (except it may have actually been written by Stephan Thomas Erlewine and automatically imported by Spotify):
Every member of Radiohead was a pupil at Oxfordshire’s Abingdon School… These four musicians began playing in 1985, dubbing themselves On a Friday… yet this incarnation proved short-lived. By 1987, everyone but left for university, where many members pursued music, but it wasn’t until 1991 that the quintet regrouped and started gigging regularly in Oxford. Eventually, they came to the attention of Chris Hufford – then best-known as the producer of shoegaze stars – who offered the group the chance to record a demo along with his partner Bryce Edge; the two soon became the band’s managers.
EMI bit at the group’s demo, signing them in 1991 and suggesting they change their name. On a Friday became Radiohead and they recorded their debut EP, Drill, with Hufford and Edge, releasing the record in May 1992.
So this suggests that On a Friday disbanded in 1987, not 1991, and then “On a Friday” regrouped in 1991, EMI signed them later in 1991, and the name was then changed to “Radiohead” at the request of EMI later in 1991.
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“Serious question” - why are you so determined to break up what is MB’s ability to show separate bands separate projects? Why do you want to change a discography which makes sense as the two separate projects that they clearly are?
MB’s ability to separate projects like this is a plus that we should be glad of. Not something to set out to destroy just to prove a point.
On A Friday had a number of different line-ups and variations, but at the core were the people who would become Radiohead. You can see on their own website they have a lot of documentation of their work, but not a single image of an old school day cassette: Radiohead Public Library.
I doubt those other people who had been in On A Friday at some point would claim they were in Radiohead.
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Why have a renamed into relationship if we are not going to use it?
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The sax players? Nigel Powell, the other drummer?
https://web.archive.org/web/20120111175247fw_/http://www.citizeninsane.eu/onafridaytapes.htm
I’ll let other people do this argument. Had enough of weird arguments for this week. At the start of this thread “Renamed in to” was talked about as using On A Friday → Radiohead as a good example of its use. Read the OP from @reosarevok - this is a band who evolved into another band.
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I’ve put a post on the Radiohead Reddit to see what the people with the most knowledge/interest in the subject think.
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Some food for thought:
- Nothing Touches Me (ostensibly an On a Friday song) has been performed by Radiohead on at least one occasion.
- Pop Is Dead (definitely a Radiohead song, despite what they may wish) is not included on the band’s website discography.
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The Reddit post was deleted:
Sorry, this post was removed by Reddit’s spam filters."