In order to help facilitate importing items from BBC systems into MusicBrainz, we would like to be able to specify a GUID upon initiating an edit session on the MusicBrainz website. MusicBrainz would use this GUID for the new item, instead of generating a new one itself. This GUID should pass some validation criteria - that it is correctly formatted, is of the right type, and is not being used anywhere else in MusicBrainz.

One use case for this, that we would like to be able to (secretly) prepare for a season of the BBC Proms by creating (commissioned) works in our own database, and then after press-launch, quickly add them to MusicBrainz. If they could have the same GUID, this would vastly simplify the process and avoid having multiple identifiers for the work and then having to match/resolve them as a later step. This will be for a relatively small number of items.

We accept that sometimes edits will be voted down, or items merged, but still think that this would be worthwhile.