GROUP_CONCAT comma separator - MySQL

Looks like you're missing the SEPARATOR keyword in the GROUP_CONCAT function.

GROUP_CONCAT(artists.artistname SEPARATOR '----')

The way you've written it, you're concatenating artists.artistname with the '----' string using the default comma separator.

Query to achieve your requirment

SELECT id,GROUP_CONCAT(text SEPARATOR ' ') AS text FROM table_name group by id;

Or, if you are doing a split - join:

GROUP_CONCAT(split(thing, " "), '----') AS thing_name,

You may want to inclue WITHIN RECORD, like this:

GROUP_CONCAT(split(thing, " "), '----') WITHIN RECORD AS thing_name,

from BigQuery API page