History:How To Merge Artists: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 23:33, 27 September 2011
Status: Under construction
Two like-named artists should be merged together whenever it can be proven that they both represent the same entity. In the majority of cases, this is because one is a misspelling of the other.
If an artist is known by more than one name, though, these generally should not be merged. In a future version of MusicBrainz, these alternative names will be seamlessly linked together, and if the names have been merged into one, it will not be possible to tell which works were released under which name.
Whenever two artists are merged, all the releases from the old artist are moved to the new one. The name of the old artist is also added as an alias, making searching for commonly misspelt artists easier.
Please note, however, that it is perfectly possible to have two or more artists in MusicBrainz with similar or identical names, that are totally unrelated. For example, Vixen, Vixen, and Vixen. In cases like these, therefore, great care must be taken to ensure the misspelt or duplicated entry is merged with the correct artist.
For other examples of similarly or identically named artists, see IdenticallyNamedArtists and NotDuplicateArtists
Contents
Step by step instructions
In this example, we stumble across an release that has misspelled "David Hasselhoff" as "David Hasselhof". While we could easily change the artist of the affected track or tracks to the correct "David Hasselhoff", it is much better to merge the misspelled artist. This corrects all affected releases simultaneously, as well as adding a helpful alias to aid in searching for the artist's proper name.
Step 1: Select the First Artist
On the page of the duplicate / misspelled artist, choose the "Merge Into..." link
Step 2: Select the Target Artist
If the target artist appears as one of the suggestions on the list, select it. In this case, though, no suggestions were found, so we have to search for it.
Once the correct artist has been found, we can mark it and choose the "Select" button.
Step 3: Confirm the Merge
Carefully check that you are merging into the correct artist (in the case of identically / similarly named artists), and that you are merging in the correct direction. Once you have done this, enter a moderation note (optional, but highly recommended), and choose the "YES" button.
Related How To's
Further Information
Not always up to date lists: