Release titles that later become artist names

MusicBrainz Style
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Los Guachos is an ensemble led by Guillermo Klein. There’s currently also a Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos entity in MB, but I have open edits to reassign its credits to the two individual entities so that it will be deleted.

Looking at the cover images of the releases on Guillermo Klein’s Bandcamp site, it seems like he credited himself for the first few albums and used “Los Guachos” in the album titles, but he later shifted to crediting “Los Guachos”. In my experience, shifts like this aren’t uncommon for jazz ensembles that release multiple albums.

Here’s my attempt at splitting the text from the covers into artists and titles:

My default would be to just enter the artist credits as they appear to be printed above per Style / Artist Credits - MusicBrainz. The obvious downside of that approach is that the first few albums won’t be listed in Los Guachos’ discography and the later albums won’t be listed in Guillermo Klein’s discography. It’s extremely likely that a future editor will think that those albums are missing and re-enter them with a credit for the other artist.

I’ve seen proposals for making discography pages additionally display credits for artists that are linked with “eponymous member” relationships, but that wouldn’t help here since this isn’t actually an eponymous group.

I can see that https://www.discogs.com/artist/4474550-Los-Guachos tries to solve this by just crediting both artists for each album regardless of how it was actually credited, but that approach doesn’t align well with the MB guidelines.

I think that my preference would be having some sort of artist-artist relationship indicating that one artist’s credits should be included in another artist’s discography, but maybe that would have other downsides. Perhaps it’d be better to have an artist-RG relationship saying “also list this RG in this other artist’s discography”. Just brainstorming here, though.

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Using relationships would be the way to go forward I think. Off the top of my head Al Di Meola (with The Al Di Meola Project) and Jimi Hendrix (with The Jimi Hendrix Experience) come to mind. In both cases the albums of one entity are not listed under the other one, even though one could assume that this should be the case though.

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there is a fairly recent thread about Droneflower you might want to take a look through, if you haven’t already. sounds like a somewhat similar situation~

there were two examples given over there which might be pertinent tho~

first, I gave the example of Huge Umbrella, a loose artist collective who’s first couple albums were released under the names of the members, but according to Mumble on his wiki are, “affectionately considered to be” Huge Umbrella releases. I decided to reflect that in the artist credits

then @ernstlx showed perhaps a better example, with Chick Correa’s Return to Forever ensemble, but since their first release was credited to Chick Correa, that’s how it’s been entered

a third option not brought up in the thread, but I have seen done… you could add both artists to the release group. it could be seen by some as a “hack”, but I think it can be the best solution in certain situations

I don’t know that there’s a consensus on what to do in these situations, based on the other thread

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They are slightly different entities. Some albums released as solo, some part of the band. It is the reissues (and especially bootlegs) that confuse that one. Bob Marley \ Bob Marley and the Wailers is similar. There are known clear distinctions between the solo and bands.

In neither of those examples should they be merged.

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I don’t know much about the artists being discussed here. But from what I see this is just “Guillermo Klein” releasing albums with his favourite muscians.

“Los Guachos V” has cover artwork which is just not showing the band name. It is quite common to see. The Bandcamp page seems to show the page title as “Los Guachos V by Guillermo Klein” and CD is then clearly called “Los Guachos V”

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I would not split that and keep it as being sold on that Bandcamp page. It is a “Guillermo Klein” release

The way the description of the album is written "For 20 years, Guillermo Klein has been creating some of the most singular and exciting music for his highly adept 11-piece ensemble, Los Guachos. " I would see this as a Guillermo Klein release, with the “Performer is Los Guachos”. And this release is called “Guachos V”. Based on how he talks of his release in that writeup.

How are these track tagged when downloaded? I assume “Guillermo Klein” is in the artist field?

I would continue this with Guillermo Klein’s - Los Guachos Cristal. These are clearly credited to the man, who then gets his favourite performers in to perform his work.

Los Gauchos are just “Performer”, not the main headline aritst.

This is like Roger Waters getting the Bleeding Heart Band to perform his work. It would always be Roger’s name on the cover and the Bleeding Heart Band would just be in the small print somewhere.

I also don’t think this is like the Droneflower example, it’s more like how Classical handles releases. This is all about one man’s vision.

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An example in this category that vexes me a bit is Nightnoise. Originally the duo of Mícheál Ó Domhnaill and Billy Oskay released their debut album Nightnoise – for subsequent releases the duo used the Nightnoise name as their artist credit. The original Nightnoise album should surely be in the Nightnoise discography, but I don’t think Musicbrainz provides a mechanism to show this.

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Maybe that’s the best solution in this case. As RG artists for all Los Guachos releases Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos or Guillermo Klein’s Los Guachos or similar. Releases in each group with artists as shown on the release…

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Some related tickets:

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I’m fine with crediting everything to him (plus the group when it’s explicitly credited alongside him on the cover), but my bigger concern is that regardless of which artist I credit it to, it’s likely that an editor in the future is going to see that it’s not listed for the other artist and add it as a duplicate there.

I like the credit-them-both-on-the-RG approach mentioned by @UltimateRiff, but it goes against the “artist should usually be the same as the first release” guidance in Style / Release Group - MusicBrainz, so I’m hesitant to do it unless the guidelines are updated to carve out an exception.

I think that the tags always (?) match the text on the page, but I don’t put much stock in Bandcamp metadata when it doesn’t match the artist who’s credited on the cover image. Here are some examples of incorrectly-credited Bandcamp releases that I’ve come across in the last few days:

I’m assuming that Bandcamp defaults to using the name associated with the account (artist/label name), but that this can be overridden at the album or track level. Sometimes artists (or labels) don’t bother changing it from the default; other times they put random junk in there or put artist names in the track titles. I figure they’re too busy making/selling music to care much about metadata.

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I don’t see the group getting credited. I am heavily looking at the descriptions. How the albums are described. I feel trying to add the performer into the album credit is not the artist’s intent here.

The band is a performer, not the artist to list on the Release.

The cover art highlights “Los Gauchos” on an few covers, but just as part of the album title.

Does this work appear on any other platform we can compare to? i.e on Spotify doe “Los Gauchos” get credited as an artist at any stage?

It seems odd to me that MB tries to change how these albums are credited elsewhere.

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The group name appears in the cover image at https://guillermoklein.bandcamp.com/album/carrera and doesn’t appear to be part of the title there.

https://freshsoundrecords1.bandcamp.com/album/guillermo-klein-y-los-guachos-live-in-barcelona (not mentioned earlier and already in MB) credits “Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos” in its cover image.

Looking at the front and back covers of Filtros at https://www.discogs.com/release/8581691-Guillermo-Klein-Los-Guachos-Filtros, I’d have a hard time crediting it to anyone but Los Guachos. The only place that I see Klein’s name is toward the end of the credits on the back.

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(As noted before, I don’t know this artist. So my posts are just me working out what I would do to credit him based on the details I can find online that are controlled by the artist) :slightly_smiling_face:

Live in Barcelona - agree this is clearly crediting both. But that is also sold by a different label to his normal one. Not directly under artist control.

Carrera - I would refer back to the Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes pages. Places we see the artist having input to their releases.

Carrera is clearly described with a single word as the title.

"CD edition of Guillermo Klein y Los Guachos “Carrera”

Includes unlimited streaming of Carrera via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more."

Also repeated in the description. I agree both composer and band are credited. (this credit is repeated on iTunes and Spotify)

Filtros is difficult. There is no write up from the artist this time on Bandcamp, only the reviews. The artist has added it to Bandcamp as Filtros and credits himself. I would love to see the spine of the CD case.

I go to the label, and check their artist page: Sunnyside Records and they don’t list Los Guachos as a separate entity. It is all under Guillermo Klein This includes Filtros. Spotify and iTunes credit just the man.

But the label again confuses things by crediting Carrera to Guillermo Klein without naming his band ( Carrera ).

I read what I see, and I see a label selling a man’s music. That man may regularly use the same musicians, but it is the man who creates and is credited by those who sell his work.

Many artist have the same backing musicians, who often have their own name, but the work goes out in the name of the creator.

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I’m not sure how much the artists care about correct album artist naming as long as the albums appear in their discography. :slight_smile:

However, I would like to have the RGs under at least one artist and if possible also under the band.

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When I said “having input to their releases”, I did not mean on MusicBrainz. I meant in the RealWorld™ :slightly_smiling_face:

I was trying to translate what I saw out there to how MB should then mirror that. In this case I kept seeing “Guillermo Klein” as the artist. And every release has his name on it and is who the label are promoting on the various online stores.

All of these releases should be in the discography of “Guillermo Klein”.

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I think an artist credit of “Nightnoise” as “Mícheál Ó Domhnaill and Billy Oskay” would work in that case. It means it takes two clicks to get to the separate artist pages, but I think that’s fine.

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