If it says “feat.”, I have to assume that the band is implicitly credited for the track. “Feat. {band member}” doesn’t make sense unless some other artist is also being credited.
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Because it’s still one entity, not two. The Feature Artist style guideline points to separate “feat.” artist credits as being for when somebody other than the original artist. Since the “featured” artist is part of the band, the style guideline doesn’t apply here, and we have kind of a vacuum.
I thought of a few more examples that illustrate the problem:
Starship featuring Mickey Thomas is still just the band Starship; Mickey Thomas is part of the band. (Originally they went out as “Mickey Thomas’s Starship”)
Jeff Lynne’s ELO is (correctly, IMO) used as a as-credited name for ELO – we don’t link Jeff Lynne’s name separately. Would it be any different if it was “ELO featuring Jeff Lynne”?
I don’t really understand this conversation tbh… Why would we not credit the band member as on release?
Clearly the band has gone out of their way to credit the band member specifically on the back page, and MB is just a reflection of their intent, so we should do the same.
[band] feat. [band member]
edit: this is from looking at the back of the release and the text on the mediums here: https://www.discogs.com/release/1039062
Which both say ‘featuring …’, prominently enough in my opinion
[quote=“Torc, post:8, topic:161248”]
Jeff Lynne’s ELO is (correctly, IMO) used as a as-credited name for ELO – we don’t link Jeff Lynne’s name separately. Would it be any different if it was “ELO featuring Jeff Lynne”?
[/quote]I don’t think groups where a member is always, in every release, prominently featured, or it seems like some kind of marketing decision because a band member got famous, is a good comparison at all. That doesn’t seem like a specific stylistic or informative choice by the artist, like in this case.
edit: also, in that example would it really hurt to have Jeff Lyne linked separately? Tags would end up the same. And his discography would get a little longer, but not necessarily become wrong? Or is that another can of worms…
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I agree that it’s a different kind of case, and it would be nice to have a consistent guideline for it. I ran into that here: Edit #38600441 - MusicBrainz
My reasoning was the same as @Torc’s, that it was just a different way of crediting the same artist. But ultimately I agree with the idea of using separate artist credits; it only adds to the available info, and we can choose later what to do with it.
It’d be false information, implying that ELO and Jeff Lynne are separate entities. The How to Split Artists guideline covers this:
The split artists edit type can only be used on artists that have no relationships, other than “collaboration” relationships. […] Please make sure the artist should be split before entering the edit! Established bands (like Emerson, Lake and Palmer) shouldn’t be split; this is intended for short term collaborations that don’t merit their own artist page.
Each of these called-out names have a relationship other than “collaboration” – they’re “members of”.
We should change this (if people are going to follow the letter and not the spirit), because from what I can tell in this case the band members individually went off and worked on songs, and then collaborated with the band entity (that they are members of) to create the song. I’m a bit tired though, if I’ve misread, this doesn’t apply.
Why we don’t allow them to exist and contribute as individuals, just because they’re part of the group as well, seems mean 
I do understand what you mean regarding ELO but I still don’t really see the practical point regarding tagging and browsing MB.
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How so? The writing and performance credits covered by relationships, and our job isn’t to second-guess the motivation for how the track is credited. We also don’t know exactly how much input other bandmembers had on the track creation – whether they made suggestions in mixing, producing, editing, sequencing, contributed a line or musical idea, or played a part they weren’t credited with. If we want to change what’s written on the release, we need to prove that it was a mistake, otherwise we’re violating artist intent.
[quote=“Torc, post:13, topic:161248”]
If we want to change what’s written on the release, we need to prove that it was a mistake, otherwise we’re violating artist intent.[/quote]
Those specific tracks explicitly credit specific members as ‘featured’ on the back of the release, and on the medium.
What I am proposing is to follow what’s written on the release, which isn’t Pink Floyd (featuring Pink Floyd), and it’s not Pink Floyd, it’s Pink Floyd (featuring a person). How that’s violating artist intent I can’t imagine :S
edit: I think we’re arguing at cross-purposes about something because I feel like we’re saying the same thing and arriving at different conclusions?
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Is that page a style guide? Check out the history of it: Revision history of "How to Split Artists" - MusicBrainz Wiki
@reosarevok edited it into its current form in 2011. Perhaps he can clarify, but I take the statement about not splitting artists with relationships as a technical rather than style barrier. (The artist which was split can’t be removed by Modbot if it has any relationships.) The comments about not splitting some artists in which the artist name is part of the band name are not directly related to the previous paragraph.
Is there actually a style guideline that covers these cases? The featured artist section doesn’t really seem to.
I think you’re mis-reading that How_To.
The idea is that e.g. Simon & Garfunkel can’t be split because they—as a unit—have relationships that apply only to the collaboration and not to the individuals. That could be an official website or other group members or whatever. The need to store those relationship compels us to maintain the collaboration artist.
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[quote=“psychoadept, post:15, topic:161248”]
Is that page a style guide?[/quote]
It’s not marked as such, but the last paragraph, plus the fact that the Featured Artist style page says it applies to guest spots only, makes it clear that it’s not just a technical concern.
But that’s true with any band, is it not? There’s a reason we don’t subdivide Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young into four separate artists, or split Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and it’s a conscious choice, not a technical one. The band is a singular unit, regardless of how the name is formatted or one member being elevated in status above the others, it’s still one band.
Just because we can split artists names doesn’t mean it makes any sense for us to make them as granular as possible. The collaborations don’t appear in artist searches, and it’s impossible to generate a list of albums that don’t include solo work. Plus there’s really no substantive difference between a band called Eurythmics and one called Lennox and Stewart. I think we’ve already been too aggressive in splitting artists in some cases, and should probably have a rule that says something like two or more releases with the same name means it’s not a short-term collaboration.
Yes, exactly. It’s true for bands. It’s not true for Jeff Lynne and ELO. That pairing does not have any relationships that would make it indivisible (that I know of).
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Yeah, the point seems to be that you don’t split actual band names. When extra info is added to the band name, even if it’s the name of a band member, there’s no reason not to split it. There are always going to be edge cases, but this is usually not hard to distinguish. In fact, if someone makes a point to call out a specific band member (even if it’s just because “they’re more famous”) it seems like we would want to record that.
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Jeff Lynne (founder, writer, producer, and only performer on their last album) and ELO have no relationships that make them indivisible? What relationship would be required to make them indivisible?
We do, by changing the AC to match what’s on the release. The reason that you don’t break a mentioned member off into a solo artist credit is because it makes the crediting system ambiguous. “If it’s one band, it’s one credit” is logical, definable, consistent, and how we already handle most of these cases. If you start weaseling in and using different standards depending on the wording, it falls apart. ABBA, John Spencer Blues Explosion Ben Folds Five, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Tony Orlando and Dawn, Asia Featuring John Payne, Les Paul & Mary Ford – there are an endless number of ways to incorporate individual’s into a band’s name, so where do you draw the line on when to split an identifiable component of a name into a separate artist? How would it not be a completely arbitrary decision?
Jeff Lynne and ELO are two separate entities in MB. Of course they are divisible. They are already “split”. I don’t understand your argument.
It is possible that an editor would wish to create a third inseparable artist, “JL’sELO”, distinct from ELO. But this hasn’t happened, has it?
You just used Simon & Garfunkel as an example an artist that can’t be split. How exactly is “Jeff Lynne’s ELO” different?
“S&G” is a third entity, distinct from “PS” and “AG”, As a duo, they have relationships that don’t apply to the individual collaborators. If “S&G” were to be split, MB would lose information, like e.g. the discogs page rel.
“JL’sELO” on the other hand is not a third entity distinct from “JL” and “ELO” (or if it is, I don’t see it on MB). One could make a case that it should be.
If “JL’sELO” were a third entity in MB, and somebody was wondering “should I split it?”, then they would apply the test that you mentioned. That is, they’d ask “does JL’sELO have any relationships that can’t be applied to either JL or ELO?”
Hmm. I like to think that I’m pretty good at spotting the source of miscommunication, but in this discussion I really don’t understand at all where the disconnect is.
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I see what you’re saying, I just don’t see how it’s relevant. Losing data is a valid reason for not splitting S&G, but it’s not a reason that we should split bands that don’t fit that model. Another valid reason for not splitting S&G is, like Jeff Lynne’s ELO (and all the other examples I gave earlier) is that they’re one band, and we don’t have a good reason to split one band into tiny pieces just because we can. We’d end up with two or three different MB artists pointing at the same single artist on other sites, an artist’s page wouldn’t list just their solo releases, and releases would appear to be temporary collaborations when they aren’t.
The reason Simon, Garfunkel, and Simon & Garfunkel are three separate MB artists is because Paul and Art can work independently, or together as something distinct from their solo work – there are three actual entities that you’d file three different places in a music store. Jeff Lynne’s ELO is still just the current name of ELO, and that’s the reason we wouldn’t create a third artist for it – there’s not a music database out there that considers “Alone in the Universe” as not part of ELO’s discography, or considers Lynne’s solo albums as part of it. Jeff Lynne can work independently of ELO, but ELO cannot work independently of it’s own members. The only way it would make sense to link Lynne’s name separately is if he wasn’t part of the band. If Art Garfunkel didn’t have any solo releases, we still wouldn’t format those albums as “[Paul Simon (as Simon)] [Simon & Garfunkel (as & Garfunkel)]”, because the band has relationships that Paul Simon as a soloist does not. It’s the same case with ELO, just like with any other “Leader + Band” vs “Solo Leader” scenario.
I want this to be the case.
Breaking free from the limited cataloging capabilities of a physical music store is great, makes related artists easier to browse, and doesn’t make a jot of difference when tagging (unless you want to make use of it).
And if an artist doesn’t want something to show up in their discography they really shouldn’t put their name on the front cover 
This is exactly what @CallerNo6 was saying -
In these examples, for instance if you split up [Jeff Lynne] & [ELO] this doesn’t happen. The ELO page contains ELO’s relationships, Jeff Lynne’s page contains Jeff Lynne’s relationships.
We haven’t lost either, and none of them are doubled up.
If there was a specific relationship dedicated to ‘Jeff Lynne’s ELO’ (not ELO or Jeff Lynne), then CallerNo6 is agreeing that you shouldn’t split them - but that should possibly be a third artist because it is now distinct from ELO.
I don’t know if that was helpful or if I was just repeating things… worth a try I guess
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That’s fine, but that’s only achievable through relationships, not through ACs. (I’m surprised there isn’t already a page that shows all releases a person appears on as a bandmember – probably a script could do it). If you tried doing this through ACs for Lynne, you’d end up with a page of his two solo albums and the one (so far) ELO album where they went as “Jeff Lynne’s ELO”. The page wouldn’t include anything else from ELO, Travelling Wilburys, The Move, Idle Race, etc. Manfred Mann’s page would be an even bigger catastrophe. Even Paul Simon’s page still wouldn’t list his Simon & Garfunkel work. Tagging would be broken for people who use the “use standardized artist names” option (unless we used 's as a join phrase), searches would break, and there’d be no way to implement the rule consistently. Can you give me an example of how you would write the style guideline that an average editor could read, understand, and follow correctly?
I assume you’re being facetious, but there’s clearly a good chunk of the time where the artist has no control over that. Take a look at the compilations on Peter Green’s page.
Currently there’s only one album credited to Jeff Lynne’s ELO, but imagine he does seven more like that. If a user sees eight albums on Jeff Lynne’s solo profile that aren’t on his solo Discogs, RYM, AMG, Wikipedia, etc. pages, something’s wrong. If I go ahead and link to those profiles (because they should be linked if they represent a significant chunk of what’s shown on his page), those profiles are double-linked and, even though only part of them would be applicable. So either Jeff Lynne’s page wouldn’t contain the relationships necessary to cover the releases on his page, or it would contain duplicated relationships, some of which only partially applied. Somebody like Manfred Mann, or any major jazz figure would have six or seven links to databases for each of the different ensembles they led.
I still haven’t heard any reason why “one band, one link” doesn’t work.
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