Artist
An artist is generally a musician, group of musicians, or other music professional contributing to the works described in the MusicBrainzDatabase. As the MusicBrainz project evolves, so does the definition of "artist", so that now the artist table is used to hold everything from publishing companies to music industry lawyers (see MiscellaneousProductionRelationshipType). In general, however, artists are people who sing or play instruments. Note that not only real existing persons can be of discographic relevance for MusicBrainz but also FictitiousArtists.
Information about artists stored in the database
Of course, the most interesting thing about any artist is which albums they've made. Each album has an AlbumArtist which links it to its PrimaryArtist.
These fields are stored directly in each artist's record:
- ArtistName: the name of the artist
- ArtistAlias: alternate names for the artist, including possible typos
- SortName: alternate form of the name used in search results
- ArtistComment: field to distinguish between identically named artists
- ArtistAnnotation: general information about the artist that may be of interest to other users
- ArtistType: used to distinguish between individuals and groups
- ArtistBeginDate: This is interpreted differently for bands and individuals. For bands, it's the date of formation; for artists, it's the date of birth.
- ArtistEndDate: This is interpreted differently for bands and individuals. For bands, it's the breakup date; for artists, it's the date of death.
Many other kinds of information can be represented using AdvancedRelationships. See AdvancedRelationshipTypes for more information.
Editing artists
Any MusicBrainz user can edit artists in several ways:
