Difference between MusicGroup and Person in schema.org

Question

I have in a website a directory of musicians, music groups and institutions (luthiers, concert halls, etc...). According with the official documentation of schema.org about MusicGroup, I could include also a solo musician.

My questions are:

1. Should I assign "Person" to solo musicians and "MusicGroup" to music groups?

2. If I assign "MusicGroup" to solo musicians, his/her thumbnail will be displayed in the Google search list as rich snippet? (I guess if I assign "Person" to solo musicians it will be displayed).

3. The same as question 2. but with music groups.

4. The same as question 2. but assigning "Organization" to institutions.

I am very interested in show the thumbnail in the search list, but also to give a logical and correct semantic syntaxis.

Answer 1

1. As the Schema.org documentation says, a "MusicGroup" can refer to a solo musician, and should be used. It has the benefit that you can have "album" and "track" properties that allow you to define the solo musician's recorded works (which are not present in "Person").
2. Probably, but that's entirely up to how Google decide to display search results for your site.
3. As per the answer to (2)
4. As per the answer to (2)

To expand on my answers to your questions 2,3 and 4:

Google only display thumbnails for search results in a few rare cases. My suspicion (Google's decision-making process is not public) is that thumbnails in search results are more dependent on having a very high-ranking website and therefore - in Google's eyes - a highly trustworthy and reliable source of information, rather than on the particular schema.org "type" you use.