Artist or band names
Please, be sure to accomplish all the following requirements in order to distribute your release correctly, thereby preventing additional updates and other arrangements that would imply additional costs to the distribution.
1. Artist name choice. Before distributing your album, make sure that no other artists is currently using the same artist or band name (similar or identical), since this can cause conflicts in the channels, and your albums may be combined under the catalog of the other artist with similar artist or band name, or vice-versa.
2. Primary artist assignation. The main artist of an album, must appear as the primary throughout the complete album.
3. Format. The spelling of the artist name, must be correct and consistent across the entire contents of that artist
4. Composer. Composers have to be indicated only at the track level, not at the release level – except if we talk about Singles with only one track.
Non classical music composers have to appear at both levels (track and release). If there are more than 4 composers appearing in all tracks we will have to use “Various Composers” instead to list them one by one.
At the album’s level you can use all roles as wanted, as long as all the involved ones (producers, performers, composers, etc.) appear in all tracks without exception.
5. Other information. The artist’s name must not include any additional information, such as his role, dates, instrument, former band, webpage, etc.
6. “Various Artists” use. If there are four or more primary artists on the album, the artist name to be mentioned at album’s level must be “Various Artists”. Do not include more than three primary artists at album level.
At the track level is preferable that do not appear too many primary artists names. It is important not to confuse the role with “performer”. For example, if it’s about a band, the band name must appear as primary artist and the members names as performers.
8. Incorrect Display of “Various Artists”. Variations or abbreviations of “Various Artists” (eg “V/A”, “VA”, “Various”, “Various Artist” or similar) should not be used as an artist name for the content in English. The translation of “Various Artists” are acceptable, but, only if they are compatible with the language of the content.
9. Compound Artist. Each artist field must only contain one artist name.
Two or more performers or groups in the same artist field is considered a compound artist, although artists who are generally listed together as a band are not considered compound artists and can or must be listed together.
If it is not the case, and there is more than one performing artist, each artist must be listed individually and assigned as Primary.
10. Generic Artists. Generic artists such as “Chorus”, “Orchestra”, and “Singer”, are not accepted in any genre. The artist names should be specific to a person, a group or band, a show or a production.
11. Original Artist Name in Artist Field. For karaoke, tribute, orgel, parody, cover albums, and ringtones, the name of the original artist must not be displayed in any artist field.