After doing a little searching on similar topics I still need some guidance. When it comes to entering a release by a single artist I am uncertain of the proper naming. For example, I have a CD with front cover displaying ARETHA: LADY SOUL. The spine displays ARETHA FRANKLIN: LADY SOUL. Finally the medium displays ARETHA FRANKLIN with Lady Soul centered beneath. What should I do?
Same question with CDs that ie. are labeled “The Coasters: Greatest Hits”. To me, it makes more sense to name the RG The Coasters: Greatest Hits because it narrows down the search. However so many times I find RGs that are just titled “Greatest Hits” and leave “The Coasters” as the artists. Yes, I kinda understand we should “use the most common name”. These are sort of two different scenarios. Can you point me in the right direction?
Name it how it is usually called. It is not uncommon that the artist name is also on the cover, but it usually is not part of the album name. E.g. you would normally not talk about an album called “The Rolling Stones: Exile on Main St.”, but you would talk about the album “Exile on Main St.” by “The Rolling Stones”.
In this specific case the release group is already in MB as “Lady Soul”:
So in this case you should check whether your CD is already included. If it is, but Picard could not find the disc ID, you should add the disc ID to the proper release. If it is not there at all, add it to the existing release group. If it is already there and the disc ID matches, see if there is any other details you can gather from the release you own that is not already in MB (e.g. packaging, barcode, catalogue number etc.).
I don’t think this can be generalized but it depends on how it is actually called case by case.
UPDATE: I moved this to the MusicBrainz category, this is unrelated to Picard