artistid

Artistid is a stable, unique identifier assigned to an artist within a data system or service. Unlike an artist’s name, which can change, be duplicated, or vary by language, an artistid is intended to serve as a persistent key to a single artist’s record. The value is typically an alphanumeric string, a number, or a URI, and it may be opaque to end users while resolvable through the system’s records or an external service.

In music and art catalogs as well as digital libraries, an artistid enables reliable lookups and linking of related data such as albums, tracks, exhibitions, and metadata. API designs often expose an artistid as a parameter or field, such as artist_id or artistid, to fetch an artist’s profile. Public catalogs may map artistids across services using authority files; in many ecosystems, a globally recognized example is the MusicBrainz Identifier (MBID). Commercial platforms also maintain internal artist identifiers for their own catalogs and features.

Disambiguation and data quality are important considerations. Canonicalization, synonyms, and aliases must be managed to reconcile multiple names for the same artist, and records may undergo merges or splits that require updates to the artistid while preserving historical references. Provenance, versioning, and linkage to external identifiers are common aspects of governance, supporting interoperability across datasets and services. See also MBID, authority control, and linked data practices.