How to Split Artists

While browsing MusicBrainz, you might find collaborations that are entered as a single artist, instead of as two or more artists linked with join phrases. This can be due to them having been entered before we had the new artist credit system, or to editors just doing it wrong. We have a convenient way to make this process easier. In the sidebar of artists there is a “Split into separate artists” link:

Clicking this link will present you with a form where you can choose the new set of artists. For example, here we're splitting the single “Alix Perez & SpectraSoul” artist into the correct separate artists:

As with the other types of editing in MusicBrainz, this edit has to be voted on by other editors before it is applied.

The split artists edit type can only be used on artists that have no relationships, other than “collaboration” relationships. If the artist does have collaboration relationships, edits to remove all collaboration relationships will be entered at the same time by ModBot. Note also that this will not remove the now empty artist entirely – that will happen when ModBot does its daily cleanup.

Please make sure the artist should be split before entering the edit! Established bands (like Emerson, Lake and Palmer) shouldn't be split; this is intended for short term collaborations that don't merit their own artist page. Also, if the collaboration has its own name - for example, Band Aid - instead of being based on the collaborator's names it should not be split, as there is no simple way to do so.