Artist

An artist is generally a musician, group of musicians, a collaboration of multiple musicians or other music professional contributing to the works described in the MusicBrainzDatabase. As the MusicBrainz project evolves, so does the definition of "artist", so that now the artist table is used to hold everything up to music industry lawyers (see MiscellaneousProductionRelationshipType). In general, however, artists are people who sing or play instruments.

There are various examples of unusual artists documented under ArtistName. See also the list of FictitiousArtists (which are also considered valid, separate artists in MusicBrainz) and SpecialPurposeArtists.

Information about artists stored in the database

Of course, the most interesting thing about any artist is which Releases they've made. Each release has a ReleaseArtist and Tracks with TrackArtists.

These fields are stored directly in each artist's record:

• ArtistID: this is the MusicBrainz UUID of the artist (not editable)

• ArtistName: the name of the artist

• ArtistAlias: alternate names for the artist, including possible typos

• ArtistSortName: alternate form of the name used in search results

• ArtistComment: field to distinguish between identically named artists

• ArtistAnnotation: general information about the artist that may be of interest to other users

• ArtistType: used to distinguish between individuals and groups

• ArtistBeginDate: This is interpreted differently for bands and individuals. For bands, it's the date of formation; for artists, it's the date of birth.

• ArtistEndDate: This is interpreted differently for bands and individuals. For bands, it's the breakup date; for artists, it's the date of death.

Many other kinds of information can be represented using AdvancedRelationships. See AdvancedRelationshipTypes for more information.

Editing artists

Any MusicBrainz user can edit artists in several ways:

• The system provides the following EditTypes:

  • MergeArtistsEdit

  • RemoveArtistEdit

  • EditArtistNameEdit

  • EditArtistSortnameEdit

HowTo

Beginners may also find interest in the following HowTos:

• HowToSplitArtists

• HowToMergeArtists