About the New Artist Alias Voting System...

adding to reply tracker

There are some artists in which the real artist name is not in the choice list (and we can't vote for 'This is a valid artist!')
See:
いきものがかり
レミオロメン
柴咲コウ
Róisín Murphy
maybe there are other artists like that, I didn't notice some others.

I really like the idea of the disambiguation. I listen to a small (and defunct) north carolinan band called Bus Stop, and I always get pictures of that DDR artist. And the reccommendations that come with last.fm thinking I'm scrobbling electronic ddr music when it's straight up late 80s/early 90s "indie" rock....

stevekeiretsu said:
The case (problem) I have seen is (was) with Afro Celt Sound System.

Since they've put out 3 or 4 cds under that name, one as "The Afro Celts", and zero as Afro Celts, my tags were accordingly "Afro Celt Sound System".

I don't know of the artist in question but there is a very similar problem I have with a Japanese artist, Anna Tsuchiya, releasing stuff under all kinds of variations. And there's a rhyme and a reason for being "Anna Tsuchiya inspi' by NANA [Black Stones]" or whatever, but I really hate having her on my charts in several places so I stuck it all under Anna Tsuchiya.
Similar problem with The Corries, aka The Corrie Folk Trio and Paddie Bell, though not as bad.
Related but slightly different is hiro, formally of J-girl-group SPEED, releasing a couple of jazz albums under the name Coco d'Or. Same solo artist, but completely different style, released under a different name. What to do?

What I would really like to see is something like Coco d'Or charting as hiro, but there being kind of a sub-chart to show how many hits were for hiro and how many for Coco d'Or. It'd be kinda weird for the user charts but would work pretty well on the actual artist pages.

Then we would get into "vote on the correct artist for this track/album" which would have as choices the different (validated) names under which things have been released by the same artist.

I also agree about linking temporary collaborations, although I kind of thing that should be something embedded within the MP3 tagging system; ie the ability to add multiple separate artists to a track.

Edit: Also, when we're voting, there should be linking pages to the other options so we can easily vote for Cabas as Cabas not just on the Cabas page, but on Andres Cabas and Andrés Cabas as well.

Is there a way to add a voting option to the artist's page? I think I saw this question in the thread, but I didn't see the answer yet. :)

So uhm..when the voting thing will end..will it have any effect on my charts?
I mean like: Will my The Arcade Fire change to Arcade Fire?

or will I have The Arcade Fire..AND Arcade Fire in my charts? Cuz that would be not cool.

wmigda said:
I hope *www.polskie-mp3.tk* will disappear soon from last.fm
At least from voting options -_-'

acreature said:
Finally, some artists (MOST) don't even need voting. Just take a look at album cover and use the right spelling. The only problem is that some artists changed the name spelling for international promotion and used different versions on the albums too, like Conny Vandenbos and Conny Van Den Bos or Conny Vandebos in that case they would all be right ???

As far as I'm concerned it doesn't really matter what the Last.FM name is in such cases, the important thing is that all the tracks tagged either Conny Vandenbos and Conny Van Den Bos and Conny Vandebos end up adding to the same playcount total.

Copy/paste from the website usually works with tags and word processors.

I will try out this idea, cause I really want to use the original spelling as much. If it works out fine it will help me especially with most European languages.

Still there remains a question: with non roman script like japanese, arabic, chinese, greek, russian, what do we prefer: the roman spelling or the original. The problem is with the original that in our charts we would have no idea whatsoever is the artist or song mentioned....

Last.fm also still has problems with letters like ÄÖÜ and äöü. I guess there are many more artist who have the same problem. One of these is the following one: Japanische Kampfhörspiele and JAPANISCHE KAMPFHÖRSPIELE.

This feature would be very good if there are mispelled entry's from user who share their files and don't care about anything. It would be also good at bands who worked under several different names like Foetus who has a slightly different name on every record.

But it still lacks at artist-names with more artist. You mentioned Pink and P!nk at the beginning who's names are almost the same. For example at Sabbat, the name is spelled totally correct, but there's a british band and a japanese band. I've already seen artist pages where users are blaming other bands for the same name, look here at Abigail

Hope we'll find a solution.

Fibo said:
But it still lacks at artist-names with more artist.
The voting has nothing to do with that at this point and may never will, last.fm hasn't told you how merging will be done other than this ISN'T it. You're thinking a few steps ahead of the curve. Try to keep the idea of merging artists, or moving tracks under the right artist out of your head for now.

If it gets too complicated just ask yourself "Does this artist exist with this spelling?" If yes then it's a valid artist, if no try to vote on a correct spelling.

So for "Pink", yes it's a valid artist.
So for "P!nk", yes it's a valid artist.
It doesn't matter if you listen to P!nk and are on the Pink page or vice-versa; both are valid artist spellings.

Merging is not being done yet; besides it would have to be track based anyway.
This is just so last.fm knows what condition the database is in.
Forget about merging while voting.

eurovisiononly said:
Still there remains a question: with non roman script like japanese, arabic, chinese, greek, russian, what do we prefer: the roman spelling or the original. The problem is with the original that in our charts we would have no idea whatsoever is the artist or song mentioned....
That isn't even a problem with romanised artist names and non-romanised artist names that were merged under the old system, last.fm put in a system so you can choose which one you wish to see here: http://www.last.fm/settings/website/

Is this function still on? Cos I haven't been able to find it ever since the new layout was launched.
It's probably been discussed, but when I searched the forum I came up only with that thread. I couldn't find any information in the Site Update FAQ and Site Update: KNOWN ISSUES either.