Artist

An artist is generally a musician, group of musicians, a collaboration of multiple musicians or other music professional contributing to the works described in the MusicBrainz Database. As the MusicBrainz project evolves, so does the definition of "artist", so that now the artist table is used to hold everything up to music industry lawyers (see Miscellaneous Production Relationship Type). In general, however, artists are people who sing or play instruments.

There are various examples of unusual artists documented under Artist Name. See also the list of Fictitious Artists (which are also considered valid, separate artists in MusicBrainz) and Special Purpose Artists.

Information about artists stored in the database

Of course, the most interesting thing about any artist is which Releases they've made. Each release has a Release Artist and Tracks with Track Artists.

These fields are stored directly in each artist's record:

• Artist ID: this is the MusicBrainz UUID of the artist (not editable)
• Artist Name: the name of the artist
• Artist Alias: alternate names for the artist, including possible typos
• Artist Sort Name: alternate form of the name used in search results
• Artist Comment: field to distinguish between identically named artists
• Artist Annotation: general information about the artist that may be of interest to other users
• Artist Type: used to distinguish between individuals and groups
• Artist Begin Date: This is interpreted differently for bands and individuals. For groups, it's the date of formation; for people, it's the date of birth.
• Artist End Date: This is interpreted differently for bands and individuals. For groups, it's the date the band broke up; for people, it's the date of death.

Many other kinds of information can be represented using Advanced Relationships. See Advanced Relationship Types for more information.

Editing artists

Any MusicBrainz user can edit artists in several ways:

• The system provides the following Edit Types:
  • Merge Artists Edit
  • Edit Artist Name Edit

How To

Beginners may also find interest in the following How Tos:

• How To Split Artists
• How To Merge Artists