Since both artists have performed separately, I think this duo shouldn’t be treated as its own artist entity, but as [DJ Jazzy Jeff] & [Will Smith (credited as The Fresh Prince)]. The artist credit would look the same in a music player. But this would enable players that use MusicBrainz data intelligently to include these releases when browsing for music by Will Smith or by DJ Jazzy Jeff. Two questions:
I think the rules are: If people performed together for a longer time it should be treated as a group.
If they only performed together for e.g. one album, then it’s a collaboration and if that collaboration is named “xy & yz” then they can be split.
So DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince could be split if they didn’t make 5 official albums together spanning over a time of 6 years.
I would do a quick check on other websites to see how widely the collaboration is used.
If there is a wikipedia page or discogs entry it the combined name is widely used and should stay as one entry.
That’s a good point - if separated, there’s nowhere to keep external links relevant to the duo.
Yes they have multiple links as a group:
https://musicbrainz.org/artist/a663d7d0-754b-40e2-9ea3-3c6c39fd5937
PS: Also they are very well known as a group. I’d say the song “Summertime” is both of their greatest hit, including their solo careers.
That does make sense. But in that case, it seems like we need a way for a release to belong to a duo/project/collaboration and to the members of the collaboration. This would also be good (for instance) for including Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young albums when browsing Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I’m not sure how it would work in the database, but in Picard it should be as simple as including the separate artist IDs in the tags without changing the tags that are normally displayed.
Anyway, I’ll leave the duo alone. Thanks!