Niche subject and niche genre, but I have been advised this needs wider discussion.
I noticed a pattern while editing in this area: unlike in other genres, in many cases, rights organisations’ databases, labels’ own discographies and even online stores credit artists’ full legal names.
However, the artists themselves rarely (if ever) use the full legal names in their own online presence. Which makes me think that the above way of crediting them is only done for copyright/royalty distribution purposes rather than for artist intent as we usually intend it for MB purposes.
Which brings me to the question: specifically for this genre, should we align artist credits to the artist’s (shorter) name, or should we continue following the sources mentioned above verbatim?
In general, I would choose the most frequently used name to avoid having to use “credited as” too often. Unless there’s a reason not to…
Do you have an example? It depends on many things.
I generally follow the thought of using what the artist uses on their first releases. On the actual artwork. As chosen by the artist at the time. Original artist intent.
Also try and stick with the artist’s own releases and not compilations by third parties.
I never trust what is used for legal payments \ rights orgs \ etc as that is just what gets written on the cheques.
I don’t see why we wouldn’t use the names as credited on the release, particularly if it’s a convention in a specific style of music (e.g. production music).
If there’s evidence of the labels/companies acting against the artists wishes (e.g. the artists really hate the legal name being used) then, in my opinion, there would be more of a discussion to be had. Even then I would possible still vote for ‘as credited’.
I should note that this discussion stems from a series of edits which have more complicated outcomes than implied in the OP - for instance, many VA production releases are now a mish-mash of legal names and MB names. This release, for instance, is all legal names except for the first track, because all the credits for Ben MacDougall have been mass-changed, but not the other artists on the release - some of who may not have another performance name, or may have one but it’s not known to us/MB.
Ok, I take it there is no generalised appetite for diverging from our usual approach in this area (which is partly a relief, as it would have meant an additional research burden for editors).
Bottom line, when we come across similar cases, we should indeed edit the artist name to the artist’s preferred form, but leave artist credits unchanged.
(And as @aerozol rightly reminds me, in that case, I have some cleanup of artist credits waiting for me.)