#musicbrainz

kepstin-work: have a "meatbag" entity that lives above the artists

kepstin-work: Yeah, but there’s a person behind it as opposed to a group

Marilyn Manson is much worse in that regard

a group is just a brand with multiple persons behind it; not that much different :)

presumably we know these are "brands", not "people" because of the performance name AR.

composition ARs tend to be uglier though

and production

(when you have a person with the same name as a group)

CallerNo6: yeah, that's the only way right now. They don't get separate artist types; both Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta and Lady Gaga are "Person"

What an unwieldy name.

They are two levels, maaake them sooo

But it still feels simpler to me

reosarevok: Doesn’t that mean duplicating every single person artist in the db?

kepstin-work: Yes please.

make them all subtypes of a single 'Actor' type that can be linked in ARs rdf-style ;)

hawke_1: no, it means uniquely identifying each person in the DB :p

?

(as opposed to the current mess where one person can have 5 MBIDs for 4 "brands" and a name)

kepstin-work: I would call Sam Roberts Band a true band and not a Roberts alias, they were a band before Roberts too called "Blinker the Star"

drsaunde: i don't disagree; Sam Roberts Band is definitely a band.

reosarevok: How is that a mess, though?

so reo wants an Artist Group?

drsaunde: the issue is deciding whether some of the older stuff released under "Sam Roberts" is actually the work of the band, or just the guy :)

I do disagree with that 5th MBID for the name, I guess.

hawke_1: well, to begin with, there's no MBID that identifies a person (no 1:1 map to the IPI or ISNI concept)

ahh

But that also means that any person who performs something would need an additional entity for the person

imho, for artists, it should be all merged into one entity. for groups, don't know.

hawke_1: indeed

hawke_1: every release has a release group, too :p

reosarevok: so every person is a work, and every artist a performance?

heh

Well, that's more or less kepstin-work's concept of it, yes

well, not really, most single-person artists present themselves as themselves and don't really need the extra layer

"Neil Young" is certainly a brand :p

Even if the guy's called like that

But really, it's more like every person is a work, and every artist an arrangement

Sometimes you need them, other times you don't

The problem is that we have the level we don't always need instead of the one we do

"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant�even I want to be Cary Grant," -- Cary Grant

Is this a question of "I want a well-formed object model that fits my conception of an 'artist'"? Or is it "I want these things to be displayed on the same MB page"?

where it gets really fun is when you have a band full of performers who cultivate appearances different from their personal selves...

CallerNo6: to me, it's mostly "I want a clear unique identifier for a person"

reosarevok: why? For presentation or for semantic meaning?

The latter

That's a bigger question than "where is the line between AC and new artist?"

hmm. so that would mean adding a new (optional) 'person' type; moving all IPIs there, and linking them to any 'artists' that they happen to be?

Yeah, and also ending the discussion "should we add artists for legal names or not"

(with "no, we should add a person instead")

in the really simple cases, they wouldn't be needed at all.

when is a project a performance name and when is it a band with one member? :-)

in a lot of cases, we will never associate a person to an artist.

CallerNo6: with having a separate person type, that wouldn't matter - either way it's an "artist"

kepstin-work: oh, right. I like that.

please, could some autoeditor approve these 2 edits? thanks. http://musicbrainz.org/edit/18720947 and http://musicbrainz.org/edit/18720953

culinko2: looks good, approved.

cool, thanks

reosarevok: Release groups are a pain in the butt to maintain too.

hawke_1: because they duplicate data

A person would not

Take all dates, etc from the Person entry, not the artist

And it actually starts *avoiding* duplication :p

Going back to the /test/. Consider http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=893070

Not a fan of that typography

"John Zorn" on the spine-thingy (for marketing), but "Deboko Hajime" elsewhere on the release. It even uses the word "project".

So this is John Zorn as Deboko Hajime?

I'd think so.

Me too.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

But is it a different genre? That concept is mostly meaningless in the NY jazz-noize scene.

And, again, it does call it a "project".

Does John Zorn consider it to be a different … artist(?) than his normal stuff?

I can only guess. To me, it looks like he does, but then wanted to market it under "Zorn".

Oooh, new Humble Bundle.

They need to stop doing that.

every 6 mo. would be fine.

CallerNo6: He did, or his label did?

He /is/ the label, I'm afraid.

heh

Is that the same situation as Slim Shady?

so what about a voice acting?

Dunno.

HSOWA: It’s complicated enough already :-p

if someone is using 2 different names on (one of their own) releases, i think that's a clear sign they are intended to be different aliases

you mean artists :)

yes

yea

i mean distinct entites

HSOWA: right now we create an artist for the character with type Other and link it to the performer with the "performs voice of" AR

HSOWA: then link either or both of the character or person into the artist credit, depending on how the release is credited.

Hmm…I wonder if this is being approached from the right way. Should it maybe be come at from “what do we want to see on the same page together?”?

yea, i know, personally I think that we should try to use artist credits as much as possibler

hawke_1: that's exactly my thought.

possibler.

awesome

hawke_1: that's what I've been trying to ask.

And in that case, why do we want Aphex Twin (et al.) to be on different pages?

Is this a semantic question or a presentation question?

aha

Presentation, I guess.

so

if we can decide to "present" artist credits on separate pages

we solve some problems

Like, to me this is totally useless and I would rather it went away: http://musicbrainz.org/artist/4d3924ac-7dc4-463...

ah yea

as an alias "is legal name of"

And (related) the annotation here should not be necessary: http://musicbrainz.org/artist/8a338e06-d182-46f...

I really think we should have ar's with AC's

To me it's far from useless, but it shouldn't be there :p

hawke_1: is http://musicbrainz.org/artist/79a09151-f6cc-48f... more useful?

one would hope so

HSOWA: Then you get into the question of “Did Declan Patrick MacManus write this, or did Elvis Costello write this?” — and the answer to both is “yes” IMO.

(write, arrange, whatever AR)

The person entity wrote it! :D

exactly.

CallerNo6: I don’t find it much more useful, no.

"Person" did x on "X" as "Artist" :p

hawke_1: same question, then. Are you objecting on semantic grounds? Or presentational grounds?

CallerNo6: I’m not sure what you mean. Both, maybe? On semantic grounds it’s stupid to have them separate because the distinction is meaningless (for ARs). On presentational

…grounds it might sometimes make sense.

The distinction is far from meaningless, one is a person, other is a persona

reosarevok: The distinction of “Richard Davis James performed kazoo” vs. “Aphex Twin performed kazoo” is meaningless to me.

(likewise for all ARs I can think of offhand)

“Walter Carlos composed Timesteps”=“Wendy Carlos composed Timesteps”.

But the only difference is "I want to represent this as an object" vs "I want to represent this with relationships", isn't it?

Either way, at the presentational level I'd rather see them all on one page, or somehow grouped together.

There's also the annoying thing of artists needing a name

Right now you can't relate two personas of the same guy unless you a) know his legal name or b) do it wrong

He should have a EAN

aka "person MBID" :p

reosarevok: “do it wrong”?

so should our hypothetical person entities support not having names?