Splitting Artists and adding aliasses proposal

Introduction

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:

• I want to see a group added to an alias, not a real name profile.
• I want to see all artist-collabs split.
• I want to see all releases an artist worked on on 1 artist page.

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.

New features

• New features on an artist page will be:
  • A complete overview of all releases an artist has performed on.
  • Links that give the releases for 1 alias only. (Like the current
    ANV system)
  • Links that give the releases for 1 group/collab only. (Like the
    current ANV system)

• New features on the add release form will be:
  • Different lines to add artists
  • Check box to make artists combined

• New rules/rule changes will be:
  • The combine artists that regularly collaborate rule will be
    deleted.
  • A new rule: Only artists that have factually worked together in
    the same role should be combined. Ie:
    • Written-By - Lennon/McCartney should be combined
    • Written-By - Lennon/McCartney/Thijs Verwest should have
      Lennon/McCartney combined and Thijs Verwest added as
      seperate artist as Lennon/McCartney have done the original
      writing and Thijs Verwest did the "new" part. Artists have
      not really collaborated.
    • Main artists like Full Intention Feat. Shena (Artist A
      Feat./Pres. Artist B) will never be combined as these
      artists have not had the same role on the release.
    • When main artists are not combined they can be combined in
      the credits section when some credits are the same.
  • The current add groups to real name alias rule will be deleted.
  • Members are added to a group with the alias they are must known
    with in that particular group.

How it works

• Groups

Nothing changes.

• Combined artists

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.

• Solo artists
  • The current system of ANV's and aliasses will stay, but artists
    are added to a group with the name they're most known with in
    that particular group.

When viewing a solo-artist page the following is displayed:

• • Artist profile
  • URL's
  • all releases the artist has worked on
  • links to all aliasses including the current one (just like the
    current ANV system this gets an ALL option. When one of the
    aliasses is clicked only the releases of that alias are
    displayed and a row of ANV's of that particular name appears.
  • links to all groups the artist has worked for. If one of the
    aliasses is clicked all groups will still be displayed, but the
    groups the artist is in with the currently selected alias will
    be bold and the others will be normal font.

Artist Page Layout

• If a solo artist
  • Artist A

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).

• When an alias is clicked the following will appear:
  • Artist C

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.

• If a group
  • Artist A & Artist B

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.

Conclusion

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.