[x] trivial name changes for hip-hop artists

The current rules for trivial name changes are pretty strict, such that the site recognizes releases by Mike Oldfield as distinct from those by Michael Oldfield and, similarly, Rick Wright as distinct from Richard Wright. These are obvious spelling changes.

What about optional titles? In the hip-hop setting at least, it seems that it would be reasonable to consider DJ Abilities equal to Abilities and Muggs equal to DJ Muggs. The changes are trivial non-spelling changes, but they're not quite mere punctuation or article changes.

I have no idea who you are, but i was just about to post the same thing.

I think it is silly to distinguish between Debbie and Deborah Harry (other than a band alias.) Same with Muggs and DJ Muggs.

When it was first proposed - I thought band aliasing would be used for exactly that but I like what we have now. It's very precise. If an artist chooses to release music as Debbie Harry, then later Deborah Harry - that change gets recognised. In Ms. Harry's case presumably she thought 'Deborah' reflected a maturity in her work. So it's different. If these hip-hop people keep changing their names on their releases - so should we. Otherwise it all becomes very subjective as to what's trivial and non-trivial (Does MC Abilities = Abilities = DJ Abilities = Abilities MC?) and the rules as much as anything should help us reach non-debatable codification. Just my view.

Any chance of getting an official ruling on this so the Muggs/DJ Muggs releases in my queue can be either un-q'd or aliased?

Personally I agree with misterpomp. I don't see why we should automatically assume that Muggs and DJ Muggs are the same entity - presumably Lawrence Muggerud had his reasons for choosing to use one alias or the other. If Bruce Springsteen released a record as "Mr Bruce Springsteen" or "Boss Bruce Spingsteen" wouldn't that constitute a new artist?

Bump.

Bump again, now that DJ Muggs is in the db.

The way these have gone into the database is consistent with our very limited approach to band name aliasing. Carry on.