I just wonder if there’s no standard about it or are those made by mistake. I was thinking that physical artist releasing under more aliases should have them defined with his/her name as aliases and use those for crediting (with same ID), but I’m finding artists having separate profiles for different aliases/monikers, though it’s still same physical artist. So wanted to make this clear, especially if it’s single artist person with no personell mutations anticipated.
This depends on whether the separate names are generally considered separate projects by the artist. Often this is the case where there is a significant genre or style difference between the names. In cases where the artist does not consider the name a separate project, the same artist entry should be used with aliases, but if the artist does consider them separate, separate entries should be created and linked appropriately (for the case of solo artist, with one additional artist entry under the legal name and the “performance name of” relationship).
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I agree that this is what editors should do, but I think that it’s sadly a toss-up whether legal names are added using aliases vs. separate artist entities.
I’ve seen a lot of cases where an artist only releases music under a single moniker, but a separate artist entity has been created for their legal name for the purpose of assigning relationships for e.g. writing credits. I’m tempted to merge these (since multiple entities often result in out-of-sync or conflicting data), but I usually don’t: I fear that someone down the road will recreate the legal name entity, creating an even bigger mess than before.
It would probably help if the artist picker for assigning credits and creating relationships included more details, like legal name (or other) aliases.
Personally I merge these when I come across them (and add an alias). If someone later again recreates the legal name entry, merging that one again doesn’t really have any downsides besides a small amount of wasted database space.
That would be good in any case, yeah. Some editors put the legal name into the annotation to achieve this sort of effect, but personally I don’t like doing that.
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I generally do the opposite, unless I know for certain otherwise, leaving aliases seperate but related to each other. that way if another alias comes along, we can simply add that relationship to the new artist, see Snoop Dogg and Snoop Lion, for example.
(this got me thinking again about Junkie XL and Tom Holkenborg, but I’ll probably start a new thread for that…)
We use to have to set up separate artist for legal names. Most of the ones you see separated now are just ones that haven’t been merged into their artist name. So, I merge when I see them, unless there are separate projects involved. But if it’s just one legal name and one artist name merge them.
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Earlier relevant discussion: When to use Aliases for artist name
So far, I’ve usually created a new artist if the alias was used to credit something, usually as writer or producer. However, apparently this is not the consensus view as you can see here: https://musicbrainz.org/edit/76527151
This seem to be overeager merging to me. Almost all of Tim Reaper’s production and writing credits are credited to “E. Alloh” or “Ed Alloh”. Right now, he only performs as “Tim Reaper”, so it’s still possible to just alias it, but shouldn’t we rather always create a new artist if they’ve been credited by their legal name?
No. New artist credits should not be created for legal names. Just use the “credited as” and give their legal name. This way all relationships are on one artist. We still see the aliases. Please don’t create new artists for producer, etc. either. Same deal. Only create a new alias if the artist themselves want to create a separate project, i.e Snoop Lion, etc.
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