An artist I follow, Singto Conley changed their name in the past. They were previously known as Kristofferson, which is tagged as an Alias on Musicbrainz. Should their older releases be updated to use the current name, seeing as the credited name on these releases now uses the current name?
It was “released as” the older name. But is now “available as” the new name. So two different releases really. Someone will have a more official answer for you, and there are threads on this, but think about the fact there will be people out there with copies with both names on them. Both versions exist.
We had that in the past already. Cat Stevens changed his name into Yusuf Islam. Old recordings, e.g. Teaser and the Firecat still sold as a Cat Stevens album. While the newer ones, e.g. Roadsinger, sold under the Yusuf name. So why change this? If an album exists under both names, the name of the first (original) release should take place.
The old releases in this case are not available under the old name. All of the official pages using the old name, either do not exist anymore, or have none of the releases on them and instead redirect to the current name, where the releases are credited to the current name
Yes, but the releases were originally released under the old name. So the historical data should be kept. The release group is a bit more dubious, I guess, but even that I see no big reason to change it to be honest.