Questions about adding event artist relationships

I’m still a fairly new user trying to figure out all the standards. I’ve been adding events lately (mainly festivals) and have run into a few questions I haven’t been able to find answers to.

  1. How should I go about adding backing band members? I’ve seen that this issue has been raised before, as there’s no good relationship for it that currently exists, but I’m wondering how I should add the band members for an event at least to keep a record of them under the current system. Are there any examples I can look at of how people have done it?

  2. In the case of a festival that includes a one-time collaborative act, like two soloists performing a set together, is there any way to join the two acts together to indicate the collaboration in the relationships section (besides time)? Is the paradigm to just indicate it with the setlist but add the relationships separately?

  3. I’ve noticed that it isn’t the norm to add relationships for the band/group members who performed, just the band/group itself, unless (I assume) members also give solo performances. Does this mean there’s no way to indicate which members of the band/group were actually present at the event? Where are the vocal/instrument inputs meant to be used, then? I’ve seen an implication that the member relationships section of the artist is meant to serve this role, but then there’s no way to record what specific events a member was absent from or on hiatus during.

Bonus question about artists rather than events:
I work with a genre (j-idols) where performers often change their stage name when they join a new group after leaving their old one. Does this warrant making a new page for the new stage name and connecting it to their prior stage names via a “renamed from” relationship? In the genre, joining a new group is sometimes called a “new life” with very little acknowledgement of their time in previous groups, which would fit with designating it as a separate project. On the other hand, nothing about their career drastically changes any more than with someone who joins a new group without changing their stage name, and it would make it more difficult to view a person’s career history if each “life” is decentralized.

Thank you to anyone who can help answer any of these.

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welcome to the party, @5chickens! great name, by the way, lol

to answer your questions in order (note, I don’t do much festival editing, but I do work with a fair amount of events)

  1. I don’t know that we have a relationship for this yet… there is an Artist-Artist relationship for supporting members, but as far as I know nothing for Events. (tho see point 3 below)
  2. in general, I’ve just noted these in the setlist and add the collaborators in the relationships. that said, if there’s a release by the collaboration, that should be tied to an actual artist (or perhaps if it’s more than a one-off act as well)
  3. again, I don’t believe there’s a relationship for this yet, but there is a ticket for a new relationship: https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-13817

on the j-idols question, that’s a tricky one… I believe in general, these should be added credited as their name in the group. for example, in Family Force 5, all the artists went by aliases (you can hover over or click through and see that for example, Hollywood’s artist name is Teddy Boldt)

that said, I work in the adjacent realm of vtubers, and the general practice there is to keep idols in an agency seperate from their “indie” alias (tho that could just be a vtuber thing, since there’s a lot more emphasis on the privacy of the artists)

(related thread: Of VTubers, agencies, and unknown legal names)