I’m trying to decide how to interpret all of these various methods of referencing a person and their name on a particular release, specifically trumpeter/composer Aaron Esposito who also goes by AAESPO depending on context. There is an existing release group where he is simply credited as AAESPO AESPOO (have an edit in for that) but there is also a separate entity in MB for AAESPO with no relationships besides the homepage for Aaron Esposito. That release group is certainly by the same person, so these entities should either be merged or related, but I’m unsure which is considered more typical/correct for a case like this.
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When someone has so few releases, I tend to merge them. Pick their more common performance name to be the main name. Then use “credited as” when they use an alternate name.
Looking at your example I’d use Aaron Esposito as I can find that with many releases on Discogs, but no trace of AAESPO.
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I’m not sure the Discogs presence/absence is the best way to judge which name to use here. Most of the Discogs releases for Aaron Esposito appear to be credits as an instrumentalist in an ensemble, etc. and I don’t actually see any of the six (soon to be seven) albums released under AAESPO credited to Aaron Esposito there, nor do I see any of the collabs done under that name with other artists represented there. If you’ll forgive what is perhaps a far-fetched example, this feels like if writer/producer/drummer Donald Glover were credited on Discogs for those things without any Childish Gambino releases being present there.
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This seems a good reason for the main name to be AAESPO then. 
Alias the few places he uses his real name. Stick his main performance name as the artist title on the page.
I did notice that his website is AAESPO.com but the title of the page then shows Aaron Esposito. So he swaps back and forth a lot.
I only used Discogs as a place to find more of his output.
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i disagree, if a person uses multiple different names for different stuff then that should be different entities.
i he has one name that he uses for some electronic stuff and a different name to do some rock stuff, then you don’t want that all mixed up under one artist name.
Thank you both for the input. My next question was going to be along those lines as well, sanojjonas. Given the Donald Glover/Childish Gambino example, I see those are two separate Artist entities, sometimes even credited on the same tracks for different things. What’s the reason one would not do something like that in a case like this and instead just have separate credits/aliases?
Both options exist. If an artist uses multiple names, then they tend to get multiple artist entities. And a “Performs as” relationships links each name to the actual person’s legal name.
Other cases when there is one main performing name then you’d use that and aliases. Keeping it all together. (Seem someone like Lemmy)