Artist/Name

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Revision as of 15:10, 11 January 2012 by Reosarevok (talk | contribs) (Artist Name moved to Artist/Name)
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Description

The Artist Name is the official name of an artist, be it a person or a band. In most cases, it's the name as found on releases' sleeves.

Additional information

This is a simple concept, but there are complications to this caused by artists releasing material under different names, whether as side projects, collaborations with other artists, or due to changes in musical direction. The meaning of an artist name also changes subtly depending on the ArtistType.

The same name can be used for more than one artist. If you add a new artist that has the same name as an existing one, the system will prompt you to enter an ArtistComment - a short description that allows people to quickly tell which is which.

There are also the concepts of PerformanceName and LegalName, either of which might be the official ArtistName. These two can be linked using the PerformanceNameRelationshipType. It's not clear how to handle artists with more than one legal name. A proposal for dealing with this is at LinkingDifferentArtistNames.

With the introduction of AdvancedRelationships, there's a lot of confusion about PerformanceNames, LegalNames, and ArtistAliass. The problems and some solutions are discussed in LinkingDifferentArtistNames. There is also some related stuff on various aspects of this at MusicalAssociationRelationshipClass, UnresolvedStyleIssues, PerformanceNameRelationshipType, and ParentRelationshipType.

Related Fields

There are two other fields in the database that are related to ArtistName.

  • ArtistSortName determines how an artist is sorted alphabetically.
  • ArtistAlias is used as a search hint to catch alternative or incorrect spelling of an ArtistName.

Examples

Individual performs and releases material under various names

Paul David Hewson sings in the band U2 under the name "Bono".:

Richard David James is a musician who releases solo material under a variety of names, including Aphex Twin and Caustic Window:

Shortening names

It's very common for some LegalNames to be shortened for normal use, such as "William" shortened to "Bill" or "Elisabeth" shortened to "Liz".

Bill Berry's LegalName is William Thomas Berry.

Dropping the last name

The classic case is Madonna. In that case, a separate artist is created for her LegalName, Madonna Louise Ciccone, while "Madonna" is a PerformanceName. This allows albums to be credited correctly to just "Madonna", while still allowing important information to be recorded against her LegalName.

Another example is Kylie Minogue, who frequently is credited as simply "Kylie". In this case, "Kylie" is simply made an ArtistAlias, since anyone looking up "Kylie" in the system would not be at all surprised to see the name "Kylie Minogue" instead.

Fictional characters

The band Spinal Tap is composed of several fictional characters, and was originally simply the fictional subject of the mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap". However, the band proved popular, and the actors who play those characters have gone on to record several albums. Each character is considered a PerformanceName, and gets an independent artist record. These PerformanceNames are used as the members of the band (see Member Of Band Relationship Type). The actors who play the characters also get artist records, and they are related to their characters with PerformanceNameRelationshipType.

Many more examples of this are at FictitiousArtist.

Extremely large number of aliases

Cassetteboy produced an album in which every track is credited to a different alias. At some point the number of aliases of an artist becomes so large that it interferes with the usefulness of the data. There is some discussion of this.

Artists with identical names

Randy Jackson, brother of Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson, and Randy Jackson, former bassist with Journey.

Artist's name has changed

The perennial example of this is Wendy Carlos (Wikipedia page). She was born "Walter Carlos", but had a sex-change operation in 1972. Even after her name was officially changed, albums were released under "Walter Carlos", on the basis that this would make them more saleable.

Cat Stevens changed his name to Yusuf Islam when he converted to Islam in 1978.

Chinese names

When Chinese people emigrate to western countries, they frequently choose a "western name", to avoid the confusion of westerners trying to pronounce their Chinese names, and of the different name order in Chinese names. Jet Li would be one famous example. His full Chinese name is Li Lian Jie, spelled in hanyu pinyin (the chinese phonetic method). "Li" is his surname, while "Lian Jie" is his given name. Changing the name order would look something like this: Lianjie Li.

Icelandic names

Björk is an Icelandic musician whose full name is Björk Guðmundsdóttir. Icelandic second names are really more descriptions than names proper, and in this case the last name simply means "daughter of Guðmund". She is, in fact, the daughter of a man called "Guðmund", unlike English names where someone called "Mark Richardson" isn't necessarily the son of someone called "Richard". So Björk calling herself just "Björk" isn't a performance name like "Madonna" or "Kylie"; it's just what any normal Icelandic person would call her.

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