#musicbrainz

if 2 entires have relatinships between then if we connect one of them to 3, all other connections will take place automatic

I *really* wish that actually happened :D

it's better solution then make "fake" and empty entires

what do you define as a "fake" entry?

legal name eniter just for connecting to other

One that won't get releases (like a legal name)

brianfreud: lol, that Marauders thing is wtftastic

Honestly, why do releases matter? Is MB is a music encyclopedia, should not just having works, ARs, or even just being a musician count? ;)

reosarevok, hehe

brianfreud: IMO, yes. But I can understand why it feels silly to have an alternate name of the same person just because he credited works to his legal name

Sadly, I don't have a better solution

(that still lets us use the correct credits... although some people might argue it doesn't even matter)

reosarevok, I've long suggested adding "Current legal name", "Birth name", and possibly, "Christened (or the equivalent) as" fields to artists

it's bad becuase in future someone may add release to "fake" entire instead of main artistit title

or some sort of expanded name support, to allow for more than 1 non-typo name

brianfreud: well, we have that now as "legal name" aliases...

then it must be edit manualy what take more time, then now to connect all performance names if it more then 2

(they can even get dates)

hell, "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart" wasn't even the name he used while alive :P

brianfreud: problem with that is the cases where you need two or more separate performance names with their own artist, but songs for both should be credited to the same legal entity

ie, Tori Amos performing as both "Santa" and "Tori Amos" on the same release?

Of course, you could just leave the legal artist for those, but it feels kinda "asymetric"

I was thinking of the various projects of people like Aphex Twin

I mean, "Aphex Twin" didnt write an AFX song

sure, but I'd also want to support listing names more correctly.

But you'd want them all in the same list for writer

(well, I would at least)

Same writer, same IPI, etc

Even with ACs, for example, I recently had drsaunde comment on an older edit of mine, complaining that the middle initial was not on either of the person's 2 album covers, even though it is in the name in the booklet's lyrics credit, and it is in his ASCAP listed name.

Really, the thing is that the legal name artist should not be related to the performance names as much as englobe them

what is the legal name though?

that's always the problem that comes up.

example:

I mean, I'd want that blob to exist even if all we know is the two performance names are the same person, but we don't even know the gender and much less the name

Born as: Joannes Chrisostomos Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart

Today known (in the English world) best as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(and that blob would get the writing credits, the identifiers like IPIs, the birth date, etc)

The blob could have all those as "legal names", it's not even if we needed a limit

Enlarging of Amazon's images wasn't fixed :(

You'd probably need to choose one for display if only because people wouldn't like arriving to a nameless blob-page, but...

reosarevok, +1 to multiple name support, though I'd drop the "legal" in favor of a list of possible - married name, legal name, baptism name, birth name, etc.

question is, which name then actually shows up top on the page?

It'd be like the MBIDs, "we display one but all of them have the same importance, really"

IMO, "whatever"

As long as it is reconigzable as that person, I don't care

"The artist formerly known as Prince"

:p

A random one of the list each time you refresh

It doesn't even matter

So if you ended up on a page titled "Joannes Chrisostomos Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart", "Madonna Ciccone", or "Prince Rogers Nelson", you'd be fine with it?

(WA Mozart, Madonna, Prince)

I would

But my point is that it wouldn't really substitute the normal artist page

I think that last is where most (though not me :P) would disagree

wait, but that's what I am asking.

Maybe I've been doing too many syntax trees :p

What name actually shows on the "normal" artist page?

the name what you see on largest % of releases

Whatever performance name is used

Even if it's the same as (one of / the) legal name(s)

reosarevok, so "AC pages" replace "artist pages" entirely?

the rest of what you've described sounds like Discogs' anv pages, but even they pick one "central" name

brianfreud: if anything, it should sound more like ISNI's

The "person entity" as a "bag" that surrounds everything related to it

Including every artist page for the same person

*before

I haven't seen the site, I just assume they operate like that since AFAIK they identify actual people rather than "names" or "performers"

(well, not in depth)

ugh, slow site

But it'd be some kind of "artist group" that stores the basic information common to all the "manifestations" of that artist

lol, Madonna lists in search as "Ciccone, M."

Say, the "artist group" concept could have an ID, a birth date, place, a death date, place, a list of names...

An IPI (or, well, for what we've seen, more than one...)

The ISNI approach doesn't really address my question;

their answer to "what name is at the top of the 'normal' artist page" is the ISNI #. I doubt "0000 0001 0782 262X" at the top of the Madonna page would make anyone happy.

Not at the top of the Madonna page

But maybe at the top of a page which has the Madonna page inside of it

well, at top of the only page I can find for her at ISNI

ie, http://pastebin.com/uqRHy4SB

Should I upload reverse side of CD's back cover?

xplt: if it has something on it.

kepstin-work: ok!

brianfreud: http://i.imgur.com/0wmMS.png

basically, I'd argue the name you give to the "artist group" doesn't even matter

reosarevok: what's the meaning of the black squiggle thing on Whatever1/2/3?

It means "I suck at paint and made my text field too big and it broke the circle"

That, or a reflection on the meaning of life

Your call :)

And BTW, shameless plug: http://musicbrainz.org/edit/17669943 <--- Any opinions about quality of my scan? (i.e. is the noise/dust significant?)

xplt: for most purposes, perfectly OK

(although I'm sure some people might have comments on how to make it even better)

i'd crop the white border and tighten dynamic range a bit. but good scan.

As I said, I might be doing too much syntax lately

reosarevok: ok, good. Thank you! :)

reosarevok: also i think it will be good to add to wiki or docs info that if someone want to crop existing cover it will be better done by lossless jpeg transformation

But syntax has a lot of apparent "duplication" that, if you look closely, is not duplication at all, since it represents a different thing

hmm, with a lossless jpg transformation, you can only crop to multiples of... 8 pixels? iirc.

for many cases that would be good enough, I suppose.

And I'd argue our "artist" model just isn't too good at representing "real people"

The point about that is that it doesn't even need a "name". I mean, an actual name (one chosen legal name?) is ideal

But if I didn't know that Aphex Twin is Richard David James, I could call that group "Aphex Twin / AFX / Caustic Window" and it would still be equally meaningful

(or, conceptually, "79a09151-f6cc-48f9-9907-3fdd0b68373f"

)

(although that's admittedly not too pretty)

kepstin-work: dunno exactly but cropping before converting to jpg is not problem since he scanned it..

hmm, if ianmcorvidae was here, he'd say that rdf handles people with multiple names quite nicely.

but he's not, so I had to say it.

kepstin-work: well, we can handle people with multiple names with amazing ease

It's users who want a name to put on top :p

we just need to mark one of the names as a 'primary' name.

How about an alias type 'display name'?

which could be several actual names

yes, it would just be a specially marked alias.

kepstin-work: indeed. But that primary name doesn't even have to be constant

Which ties to the alias thing

then we just completely drop the name field from the artist table, and compute it from aliases.

Having one artist name is actually kinda silly

Yeah

I'd love that

But it might scare users :p

+1

can we get it done for the fall schema change?

that would be a really nice feature.

We can

If we convince people that they want it

Or at least that they don't oppose it

But that's really a separate thing from what I was mentioning, too

(since that applies also to groups, for example :) )

Would this let me merge cat stevens/yusuf islam/steven demetre georgiou? ;-)

we already have a way of marking the 'primary' (i.e. display) name for each artist per locale.

and setting dates per-name

hawke_1: I'd argue you can merge them now

(legal name alias dates)

Or does alias types already let me merge that reasonably

hawke_1: yeah, i'd be for doing that now.

hawke_1: set the dates, and it's good.

selecting which name to use as the 'primary' name would be interesting tho

he's still best/commonly known as cat stevens

kepstin-work: Yep…but he currently performs as yusuf islam

kepstin-work: make it depend on your computer clock :p

and that’s his current real name

"If you watch this page in 1970, it shows Cat Stevens!"

:D