Parent/child acts for an artist

[albummaster]

At the moment, a 'parent' artist on BEA serves to group all work by a given artist together, but still allowing their individual acts to be attributed correctly. From a BEA perspective, this allows all of the scoring for an artist to be tied to the albums that they have released which means artists can then be ranked according to their individual output, even if it's spread over a number of acts.

There seem to have been a few additions recently where we don't have enough guidance in place to determine which artists should be bundled together. Through this thread, I'm wanting to understand this problem better, and refine it so that we can establish some better guidelines around this. Lately, there are examples where it's inconsistent and the lack of clarity around this is probably the main reason.

Having looked at this functionality evolve over the last year or two(*), there seems to be several types of 'child' act which can be distinguished, and are currently used to group output from one artist together:

1. Where the spelling of the artist is changed slightly on each release e.g. Tyrannosaurus Rex and T.Rex, John Cougar Mellencamp and John Mellencamp, Santigold/Santogold, Mt. Zion, Foetus (and lots of other similar examples) where you'd expect all of these to be grouped together simply because of a variation in spelling (but the correct spelling still accurately recorded on BEA against each individual album).

2. Where a band is still the 'same' but the name has changed completely e.g. Icehouse / Flowers (but this also causes the problem of which name to use as the 'master'!).

3. When the artist is clearly the same but they are performing with a different backing group e.g. Bob Marley with/without the Wailers, Neil Young with/without Crazy Horse etc,

4. When the artist is the same, but they have multiple entirely different names for their acts e.g. Richard D James (AKA Aphex Twin, AFX etc) or Prince with/without the Revolution + 'Symbol' etc.

I think, in summary, if an act can't be attributed to one person without also being unfairly 'taken away' from another, then it should be recorded separately e.g. we wouldn't group John Lennon's work together with the Beatles as he can't claim sole credit for The Beatles output.

This brings us to which name we should use as the parent. Well, for a solo artist, this is currently the best known 'stage' name of the performer (the name that most people would associate with that artist). However, there are issues with this such as Cat Stevens and Yusuf Islam. Even though his current name is different, he's probably better known as his previous alias, and I think most visitors to this site would be searching for Cat Stevens (not necessarily the more knowledgeable people, but certainly the casual music fan that makes up the majority of visits to the site).

Anyway, a few discussion points above maybe, and I'd be interested to hear people's views...

(* see here for our previous discussion on this subject: http://www.besteveralbums.com/phpBB2/vi...php?t=1026 )

[Hayden]

Blob em altogether.

It'll be tricky finding what artists should be put together and what shouldn't though John Lennon (maybe not), Jimi Hendrix (probably)...etc...

Could be difficult.
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[videoheadcleaner]

This one is my fault...

Too much JG Thirlwell stuff I have been adding. Since he is best known as Foetus, that should be a separate entry. Each release has a combination of Foetus somewhere in the title. RESULT: Foetus (parent) Foetus Under Glass, Phillip & His Foetus Vibrations, Foetus Over Frisco, Foetus Art Terrorism, You've Got Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Über Frisco, The Foetus All Nude Revue, Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, Foetus, Inc. (child acts)

As JG Thirlwell (or Clint Ruin [another one!]), he has taken on solo experimental projects as Steroid Maximus and Manorexia. RESULT: JG Thirlwell (parent), Steriod Maximus, Manorexia (child acts)

Other acts of his such as Wiseblood, Baby Zizanie, Flesh Volcano and Freq_out have been collaborations with other people. If (and when) tagging is made possible, JG Thirlwell could be attached to these as a member of the group. RESULT: separate entities

In addition, Rowland S Howard has works with Lydia Lunch and Nikki Sudden (2 I have entered) so as these are joined collaborations, is there a parent act or does there need to be a 'split' act available?

Maybe an option for those that add a new act that is related to others, could be made on the admin album page?

[albummaster]

I think the JG Thirlwell example provides quite a good opportunity to set the system up so that it can cope with all types of scenario.

I'm in agreement with how you've assessed them. I think all the Foetus acts can be combined together (quite logically). I think all his other solo projects should be grouped together as well. However, the Foetus ones could also fall under Thirlwell, so you end up with Thirlwell as the 'parent' and then Foetus underneath that, will all the other acts alongside. His collaborations with other people should be recorded separately.

For the Rowland S Howard examples, I think these should be recorded separately. The site has deliberately stayed away from 'split acts' so far because it makes things more complicated than they need to be (the same goes for any duo/trio acts where there's no dominant party).

Lastly, maybe at some point there could be the option to add 'related' acts, but the definition of 'related' might need to be debated at some stage so it doesn't just become any old tenuous link.