Want to document online artist change in alias, but no "legal name" exists

MusicBrainz
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i think i’ve done all 4, haha. it really depends on the artist.

  1. i do this if it’s a similar name, or if all previous releases were re-released under the new name, or sometimes if they sound pretty much identical to me
  2. i do this if i know at least one part of the artist’s legal name (first or last) or if the artist at least has a human-sounding name that could be their legal name. i did this here
  3. i do this if they are clearly distinct projects but i have no semblance of a legal name to link them to. i did this here
  4. i do this if i can’t actually prove that they were the same person lol. though i will usually do a version of number 3 for this, like here

i also see people link aliases to their most common one as a “legal name”, especially when there are a lot of them and annotations would be impossible to keep up. here’s an example of this (though this isnt a handle change situation; the artist does still use most of these)

there was a very short similar (but not identical) discussion here a while ago; i’ll link it if i find it

edit: yes, here it is!

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