I'm struggling to design a music database to track artists/bands, albums, songs, recordings etc. I want to identify the fields (including either solo-artist, band or perhaps duet) that make a Recording entity unique. I've considered that Band, Song and Date Recorded would make a unique key for a Recording (though that won't account for multiple recordings on the same day). I believe a Recording should be unique to a Band or a Solo-Artist (but not both, so which?).
I've considered making a Recordings table, a Bands table and a Band_Recordings table (the Beatles may have multiple versions of Yesterday). That would mean Ringo Starr becomes a band! Not quite right. I could call the Band table Acts or Performed_By to include both solo artists and bands but that seems wrong. What would go in the fields First_Name & Last_Name for the Beatles?
I would like to be able to have an Artists table (Ringo, John, etc), a Bands table (Beatles) and a Band_Artists table (Beatles/Ringo, Beatles/John, etc). With this scenario what foreign key lands in Recordings? Artist_ID? Band_ID? Both? And again, what fields combine to uniquely identify a Recording?
Another part of my problem is that for one Recording (Beatles/Yesterday), I'd like to also identify it as a Paul McCartney Recording (or John, George or Ringo) in addition to being a Beatles Recording.
I'm stuck! Certainly this type of database is often created, but I can't see how. Any answers or guidance is much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.