hololive is a large virtual idol group, similar to AKB48. Historically its members have performed in subgroups that reflect their respective branches:
- Members from the general Japan branch have performed together as “hololive”, e.g. for their cover of Umapyoi Densetsu
- Members from the English branch performed together as “hololive English”, e.g. for their recent concert group song Serendipity
- Members from the Indonesia branch performed together as “hololive Indonesia”, e.g. for the single Juara Khatulistiwa
- Another Japanese branch called “hololive DEV_IS” has no directly credited releases in MusicBrainz, but was a Japanese branch with a musical focus
- Members from all or multiple branches perform together as “hololive”, often credited as “hololive IDOL PROJECT”, e.g. for the group song Our Bright Parade
(There are additional subgroups and units within hololive, but they’re not relevant to this discussion. I’m also glossing over some release attributions in MB that are probably mistakes.)
On September 7, hololive announced that the branch system is ending and going forward hololive members will perform together as “hololive”. hololive’s website and social media has already been updated to reflect this.
There are a few ways we could represent this change in MusicBrainz.
Broadly, three options I see are:
- Dissolve the branch-specific groups and add direct relationships between all members and the existing hololive IDOL PROJECT artist group, perhaps renaming it to “hololive”
- Dissolve the branch-specific groups and add direct relationships between all members and the existing hololive artist group (previously intended for the general JP branch alone)
- Dissolve the branch-specific groups and add direct relationships between all members and a newly created “hololive” artist group founded on Sept 7
(I’m glossing over details like adding aliases and relationship end dates for the former branches to focus on the general approach.)
Does anyone have experience tackling situations like this in MusicBrainz, or recommendations for which approach seems best?
interesting news, thank you for sharing. I’m one of the editors who put in a bunch of the work on the hololive talents in MusicBrainz (tho it’s been a while since I’ve looked at them, honestly, prolly since Sana graduated or so)
I think option 1 or 3 would make the most sense, as hololive JP (despite having the same name as the future group) doesn’t feel like the right place to group everything under
asking for opinions from other editors tho, would it make sense to add a renamed into relationship in the case of groups merging? if not, this detail could be simply put in the annotation
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Thanks!
Ina’s explanation of this change yesterday is making me lean somewhat toward the third option. (Some background: Ina was a presenter for the original announcement of this change. After fans raised concerns, she gave a nuanced explanation yesterday of Cover’s motivation and her own expectations.) During yesterday’s stream she mentioned that hololive is being rebranded with a new logo to emphasize that this merger creates a new hololive for all members. Given that intent, it seems appropriate to create a new artist group.
On the other hand, we already have an entity representing a unified hololive in MusicBrainz: hololive IDOL PROJECT. I don’t know whether they’ll continue to release group songs under that name, but if they do then it’ll create a lot of confusion to have both the post-merger “hololive” and a functionally identical “hololive IDOL PROJECT” as active artists. Adding a “renamed into” relationship in that case would only confuse things further, e.g. if “hololive IDOL PROJECT” renamed into “hololive” and then “hololive” went on to release singles as “hololive IDOL PROJECT” 
Another update, and a plan: I talked with a couple of MB users on Hololive fan discord servers. The consensus was that Option 3 is the least likely to cause future problems.
The plan, then:
- Create a new group artist named “hololive”, founded 2026-09-07
- Use a “renamed into” relationship from the original four branch group artists (JP, EN, ID, DEV_IS) into the new hololive group
- Make sure it’s clear (e.g. through disambiguation) that the former branch group artists are historical entities for releases that were made under those groups
- Update relationships for hololive’s current talent roster, ending their relationships with branches and starting new relationships with the new unified hololive on 2026-09-07
- Update relationships for hololive’s branches and subunits as appropriate, e.g. hololive third generation ended its subgroup relationship with the JP branch and started a relationship with the unified hololive on 2026-09-07
I’m going to leave hololive IDOL PROJECT untouched until those edits have been accepted. The hololive IDOL PROJECT artist serves a very specific purpose, distinct from hololive’s branches, and has its own discography. I think some cleanup, clarification, and disambiguation will be needed, but it’ll be easier to do when the dust has settled from these changes.
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