I’m a fairly new editor so I’m not sure the best way to do this. There’s only one album by this artist, and it looks like it’s been duplicated, once under the correct name here and then again here - the artist’s full name is Pär Hulkoff but on the discogs page, spotify, artist’s facebook etc. it’s credited only as Hulkoff. There aren’t any releases where he’s actually been credited listing his full name.
So, would it just be a matter of merging the artists, and then merging the release after that’s gone through? Or can it be done at the same time, or is there a better way of doing this? Sorry if this is an obvious question but I figured I’d ask before jumping in and potentially making a mess hah.
at first glance, I would not merge the artists. I would say Hulkoff is the correct name for the releases, but Pär Hulkoff seems to be the epinumous member of the band. Why delete him, if he can be used in the database already? My idea would be to delete the release from the Pär Hulkoff page. But beware, I’m also a newbie and better wait for expert opinions
From what I’ve seen for other artist’s real names, if there’s not a release that specifically uses it as the credit it’s been listed as an alias instead of under a whole separate page. That way it still comes up in searches, but wouldn’t leave an unnecessarily empty artist page. I might be wrong but I think that’d be what would make the most sense here.
Edit - also (maybe?) worth noting is Hulkoff is the solo project of the vocalist of Raubtier and Bourbon Boys, so yeah my instinct is that separate pages for Hulkoff and Pär Hulkoff are redundant but if someone experienced in formatting can confirm how all of this should be organized that would be awesome haha.
You should be able to do both merges at once, they shouldn’t affect each other. I would tend to merge the release group, though, unless you’re 100% sure this is an identical version of the release. Sometimes I wait for the release group merge to go through so I can more easily see the releases side-by-side before I decide whether to merge them.
Cool, that makes sense. In this case both of the releases are the CD version and not LP or anything, have the same label, ID and barcode so I’m pretty sure it’s safe to merge them. I did edit one song on the release that the other will be merged into, there should be an additional artist credit, and that edit hasn’t gone through yet - that shouldn’t interfere with the merge or anything, right? The version of the release under the incorrect name already has that credit listed (although not entirely in the correct formatting, it lists “Joakim Brodén” which is correct but he is credited under the nickname Jocke Brodén on the release).
I think it depends on if you edited the track or the recording. If the recording, should be ok (if you target the correct recording in the merge, you can cancel the edit anyway).
If the track, you might want to wait until it’s done. Track edits are medium edits and medium edits are especially prone to failing when you don’t realize there’s a conflict, in my experience. You’re going to be merging the mediums along with the release, I presume.
I edited both the track and the recording. Sounds like it’ll probably be the cleanest if I wait for the artist and release group merges to go through before merging the releases & mediums.
You can use artist credits in relationships now, so after merging the artist into “Hulkoff” you could then use “Pär Hulkoff” for the “member of” relationships.
However, Discogs seems to have separate pages for both artists, so I am not sure what is the correct approach here.
An entity should never be “member of” itself. Same as it should never be legal/performance name for itself. If that relationship is needed/warranted, it is also warranted for there to be (at least) two separate entities. (IMO.)
I’m not exactly sure what do you mean with your first sentence. Assuming the merge would go through, the “Hulkoff is a member of Pär Hulkoff” relationship would cease to exist, leaving the remaining two relationships, which could then be credited to Pär Hulkoff AC (if it’s decided to be the correct AC in those cases) so the relationships would become:
“Hulkoff (as Pär Hulkoff) is a member of Bourbon Boys”
“Hulkoff (as Pär Hulkoff) is a member of Raubtier”
Edit: Interesting to note that the current “Hulkoff” is set to the type group in mb and also has other members linked. According to https://www.last.fm/music/Hulkoff this is a solo project, so should this be changed to person instead? (he uses supporting musicians in live performances, though)
If he has other musicians there, he is a “group” in that situation. Look at it like it being the name of a project. The current project is called “Hulkoff” and one of the members is “Par Hulkoff”. His next project will get a different name. This is not uncommon at all - look at people like Prince. Many artists will have solo and group projects of different names.
I disagree with this tbh. Avril Lavigne is also a solo artist despite having supporting musicians on her live performances, why should Hulkoff be different?
The reason that I think that it makes sense here is his choice of using a different name. “Hulkoff” has been used for the project instead of his full name. So that is why it looks like he sees it as a group separate to him as a person.
He has already been in many other groups. So the individual needs to stand separate to the groups.
This is what I mean about a guy moving around between projects.
Whereas Avril tends to be a different style of singer with backing musicians. I don’t pretend to know much about her or her music, but a check here shows she has never been in a band and always is the name on the bill. She is an individual who sings with other people as duets.
I think the difference is that some acts are essentially bands, they just only have one stable member and the rest of the band are in more‐or‐less quick rotation, depending on needs. A rule of thumb is maybe that Avril Lavigne would be just fine singing/performing to a backing track, while Pär Hulkoff wouldn’t perform without an actual physical band? In the end, the
Sigvard is essentially an outlet for Jonas Hellerup’s songwriting. The band always consists of him, but depending on context may also consist of others. E.g., I was part of the band (not a “support musician”) for a couple of months leading up to a concert a while back. I had creative input on the arrangement of the songs and on the setlist we ended up playing. I would expect that if I had played as a backing musician for Lavigne, I would have been told exactly what and how and when to play rather than entering into a creative process with the rest of the group about it. Maybe Hulkoff is the same?
We can still have separate entities for Hulkoff and Pär Hulkoff, I don’t want to merge them. There is also a supporting artist relationship that can be used, so what I am proposing is that we could change the following from:
Hulkoff (group entity type)
Anders Johansson is a member of Hulkoff
Niklas Johansson is a member of Hulkoff
Pär Hulkoff is a member of Hulkoff
into
Hulkoff (person entity type)
Anders Johansson is a supporting artist for Hulkoff
Niklas Johansson is a supporting artist for Hulkoff
Pär Hulkoff performs as Hulkoff
@Freso I don’t think that Avril Lavigne would perform without an actual band outside of maybe acoustic/unplugged sessions. Her tracks usually include piano, guitars (electric and bass), drums and vocals. She had multiple supporting artists over the years, I even remember her long-time lead guitarist Evan Taubelfeld (however I’m surprised nobody linked him using the supporting artist relationship yet). I agree that there is a difference between “play what you are told to and how you are told to” and participating in the creative process (if you look at his relationships you can see that he also wrote and composed stuff for her). However if the various pages are specifically calling Hulkoff a solo project, I’m still inclined to use a person entity type in this case.
I have to disagree with your suggestion. I do not see why you need to stop Hulkoff the GROUP from existing as a separate entity to Pär Hulkoff the person.
Here is another good quality database who treat them separately
You misunderstood me once again. I do not intend to merge the two. I just intend to change the group entity type into person entity type, so instead of having “Hulkoff (group)” and “Pär Hulkoff (person)” we would have “Hulkoff (person)” and “Pär Hulkoff (person)”. And as I mentioned in my previous reply, the relationship between the two would change from “Pär Hulkoff is a member of Hulkoff” into “Pär Hulkoff performs as Hulkoff”. Pär Hulkoff’s relationships to other projects (Bourbon Boys, Raubtier) would stay the same.
I’m glad this whole thing has sparked some interesting discussions and I can see arguments for both ways of handling things, but at least in this particular case I don’t think record label legalities are a contributing factor, since I believe Pär Hulkoff actually owns Faravid Recordings and its only releases so far have been Hulkoff and Raubtier albums.
