This is a proposal for a different approach to work with artists,
aliasses, ANV's and groups/collaborations and has nothing to do with the
artist page reorg mentioned in another article which is mainly about
credit indexing. Currently a lot of comments about the artist pages are
heard, like:
When writing this I've tried to look at the programming too. Imo a lot
can be done automatically as long as the DB and the scripts are
accurate/extensive enough. Some things listed below are therefore maybe
not necessary but are imo less hard to implement.
This proposal is just a first set up. I hope to complement it in the
near future. Some things like combining it with folder-like organisation
etc is not mentioned and also not important for this proposal and thus
left out of this article.
Nothing changes.
An artist section in the add release form will look the same as it
currently does but will have 1 extra check box behind an artist name. As
soon as the small + button is pressed and the second
artist name box appears both artist names have a checkbox behind them.
If these checkboxes are checked the artists will be added in the DB as a
combined artist.
When adding multiple artist names for example: Artist A, & [X] Artist B,
And [X] Artist C, With [O] Artist D, & [X] Artist E [X] It will be added
as (in current format): Artist A & Artist B And Artist C With
Artist D & Artist E.
Clicking on Artist A & Artist B will lead to an artist page with all
Artist A & Artist B releases and links to the two members. How all
artist pages will look is summarized at the end of this proposal.
When viewing a solo-artist page the following is displayed:
Aliasses: View All / Artist A / Artist B / Artist C / Artist D /
Artist E / Artist F / Artist G
Groups: Group A / Group B / Group C
and all releases this artist has worked on with all his different
aliasses (group releases are also in this overview. Maybe it should be
possible to switch this on/off).
Aliasses: View All / Artist A / Artist B / Artist C / Artist D /
Artist E / Artist F / Artist G
ANV: View All / ANV 1 / ANV 2 / ANV 3
Groups: Group A / Group B / Group C
and all releases this artist has worked on with this specific alias and
from the groups he is a member of with this specific alias. In this case
Group B.
Clicking the ANV links will give a further splitting of information as
it currently does too.
Clicking the groups links will lead to a groups artist page.
with links:
Artist A, Artist B
and all releases that that combination has worked on.
On all artist pages profile and URL's as normal.
Of course the split with Releases/Remixes/Production etc will be
available for all artist pages too.
Imo it will be good to split all current combinations and make the
artist pages more informative. All problems with groups/collabs and real
name profile members will be solved.
Of course this will result in some very long artist pages for a lot of
artists. The folder-method (with folders for the different sections)
will lead to shorter artist pages and less server usage.