Wikipedia talk:Notability (songs)

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[edit] Possible Addition

I want to see this included:

  • Has been released as a retail single.

The idea behind this sort of thing, as I understand it, was to keep articles from being made for every song off an album, when all there really was to say was "'Foo' is a song from Band's album 'Foo Songs.'" Retail singles are obviously better known than some random album track, assist in making discographies complete due to the successful Wikiprojects, and, at the very least, have tracklisting information and infobox capabilities. Thoughts? --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:45, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that this would be another good one,

  • Has been in a major motion picture. If a song in noted for being in a movie, why shouldn't it deserve notabilaty?

Just a thought,Dan 14:27, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

    • I don't know about that...the score of a movie could certainly contain a non-notable tune. If it's noted for being in a movie, that's different...there would be secondary sources on it and it would probably be worth an article. NickelShoe (Talk) 14:37, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree with NickelShoe. I would say a major motion pictures adds to notability, but not on its own terms. -- Steve Hart 00:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I think..

That if a song has been in the top ten in any country, it is notable. Gumpu is an example of this. Esteffect 01:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

If a band is notable enough then all of it's singles are notable, regarless if a few didn't do too well chart wise. Also I believe that some bands (ex. the beatles) are notable enought that all of their songs to deserve an article. These guidlines are close, but if interpereted strictlly it won't work--T-rex 16:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I have stated my opposition to charts earlier, for several reasons, one is that charts are the result of marketing rather than an expression of quality. -- Steve Hart 00:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The "appeared in a motion picture" clause

Along with despising the "has had an official remix" rule (see my comments on that above), I also despise the "appeared in a major motion picture" rule. There are hundreds of movies every year that are either released by a big film company or released by an indie and then become well-known. If these films have an average of 10 songs (as some movies have many, and some have none), then that's a few thousand songs that would (according to the proposed guidelines) "border on notability" every year, even if they are otherwise completely insignificant. In my opinion, this rule is amazingly stupid- imagine how many songs would qualify for articles simply because of this one rule, and then how many bands would qualify simply because of one song that was used in a movie, and then how many albums would get articles simply because they were made by bands that are truly non-notable, etc. I'm certainly not an "inclusionist" as far as notability is concerned, but I think most people would agree that there has to be some threshold for notability. There are dozens of movies released by major studios every year that nobody gives a damn about- I can't imagine anyone giving a damn about a single song that was in one of those films. -- Kicking222 19:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

While I agree on the remix clause, I agree for a different reason - it gives undue weight to specific genres. I tihnk the motion picture clause, if we're to have it, is an excellent one, as it infers notability beyond an album track. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
If the song were released on an album, and in the film. What if it was written for the film and simply used as background music? And there's absolutely nothing to say about it other than basic stats of who wrote it and what film it was in? NickelShoe (Talk) 14:17, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
if simply used as background music then I don't think that is much claim to notablity, I think this clause is to include songs whose notablity is dependent upon a particular movie --T-rex 14:28, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree. This is supposed to divine notability beyond their existence, right? Usage in a movie, whether as part of the background score or on the soundtrack, shows extra attention that doesn't exist, for, say, a random non-single track off of a U2 album. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] At the very least....

At the very least, we need to get rid of all articles on individual album tracks that are not otherwise notable. I've prodded a few AC/DC ones and will prob do more soon. exolon 00:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I have AFD'd Little Lover as an example of an individual album track with no other claim to notability. Lets see what the consensus is. exolon 00:17, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
    • I suggest {{prod}} for a lot of these before trying the AfD route. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:20, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
      • I've prodded some - the AFD is to try and get some kind of consensus going. If a precedent can be set here it will be easier to decide on individual album tracks. If (as I hope) we get a resounding Delete verdict, then we can think about doing a multiple AFD to get rid of loads of them. If on the other hand we get a resounding Keep then I'll stop trying to fight the inevitable, even if I think it's wrong. exolon 00:24, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
      • I have some concern that the prod system is less likely to get any real content merged back into the album article. Jkelly 00:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
        • With most of these, there is no content to merge, though. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you want the data, simply merge 'em and redirect. Seems like a better route than AfDing a pile of stuff when we already have a fairly workable system inplace as a standard. --badlydrawnjeff talk 00:55, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Jkelly. prod is for deletion. Why not just suggest its merge, then take a survey/poll on the talk page. If its prodded, then d-prodded, its more likely to end up deleted through AfD. SynergeticMaggot 00:51, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Or just be WP:BOLD and perform the merge. If no one is going to contest a prod, there certainly won't be any opposition to moving anything useful and leaving a redirect behind. Jkelly 01:20, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
  • All the prodded songs have been unprodded by User:Kappa so prod is a waste of time here. I'm going to wait for the results of the Little Lover afd then do a mass afd on all the ones I can find assuming a Delete verdict. exolon 21:56, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AFD Verdict

The AFD verdict for Little Lover was delete, see here. However wasn't resounding 3 Delete votes vs 1 Keep, and the closing admin comments indicate that they weren't setting a precedent. I may start Boldly merging single song articles back into albums, saving any bits of trivia. exolon 23:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

  • Right - I've taken AC/DC's latest album, Stiff Upper Lip and redirected all the non-singles songs to the album title and merged in a couple of relevant trivia bits. I'll leave it there for 24 hours and see if anyone objects before I start any more. exolon 23:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My take on criteria for individual song articles

This is quick and dirty but off the top of my head. But to make it clear :-

All of the below are contigent on parent articles not having enough space. Otherwise the details should be included in the artist page, a discography page, or a list page.

Information on individual songs should be on a 'top down' approach. The first place to consider placing information about an individual song is the artist article. If that isn't appropiate think about the artist discography page or a 'list of' page, or adding information on the appropiate album page. Only if all of those pages are inappropriate should an individual article be considered.

Example criteria that might indicate a song is individually notable in some way

1 - Released as a single - This usually gives us info like chart performance, information on the video, info on promotional performances on TV plus reviews to link to

2 - Iconic - Songs that may not meet the first criteria, but have become known in their own right by people who are not dedicated fans of the artist.

3 - Covered/Sampled - songs that have been covered and/or sampled by other artists may have enough info to warrant a separate article.

As I said not exhaustive but a start. I really don't think 'Song X' articles like this -

"Song X is the third track on Album Y by artist Z" plus a load of repeated info from the album page itself.

- are worth having at all. If that's all that can be said about the song, it doesn't need it's own page.

Disclaimer - this is a personal opinion only. exolon 00:04, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Queen

The Queen WikiProject has set out strict guidelines for notability (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Queen/songs) and User:Craptacular is re-adding all the articles we have removed could we get some help? -- miketm - Queen WikiProject - 12:53, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

That notability guideline seems Project-specific. Craptacular is not part of your project, so I'd assume he's not aware of it. Part of me says leave them, because I think a lot could be said about nearly every Queen song using books and articles written about the band. But a simple redirect replacement could fix the problem, or, if you have to, AfD. --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
i have reverted the edits and i referred him to the notably page and he has stopped - miketm - Queen WikiProject - 13:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] There's Always Something To Say About Any Song

In that every song has a melody and chord structure. Outside of some of the jazz entries, there doesn't seem to be much of an attempt in many articles to actually describe the music in either subjective or technical language. Surely this is encyclopedaic, arguably more so than chart positions? Kisch 03:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

But for a vast majority of songs, that would be purely original research. I'm pretty sure you'll find few reliable sources on the melody and chord structure of Chase the Ace (song). Pascal.Tesson 23:53, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree (though I admit to not knowing the song you cite) - the information about chord structure is clearly on the recording itself, and only requires a knowledgable musician to transcribe it with little or no ambiguity. This is no more original research than translating a foreign language text.

I think my point is that jazz and classical entries are not afraid to describe the music in technical language, whereas popular music entries hardly ever mention it - it's no doubt a function of the type of people who contribute to the respective articles, but, from an encyclopedic point of view, it's inconsistent. Kisch 02:10, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Anyone ever thought of archiving some of this page?

I just started reading for the first time this page, starting from the middle until I realized that that discussion was over a year old. Pascal.Tesson 23:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. Please restore any discussions higher in the page that were still active, I removed everything before August except one that spanned July and August. -- nae'blis 17:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notability vs hope for expansion

Just wanted to jump into the discussion. I think that there are in fact quite a few songs (although certainly not 0,1% of the total space of songs ever recorded) for which a reasonnable article with significant content. I started getting annoyed with song articles when doing categorization work. You would not believe the amount of garbage that we have to maintain because people rushed to create stubs for their favorite artists 15 albums and 200 songs only to leave these stubs to rot in Wikipedia neverland. I think the guideline should really focus on this issue and for instance institute as policy that all album articles should start as part of an artist's article until they've grown significantly enough to merit a life of their own. Similarly, I firmly believe that it would be best for songs to always start as subsections of album articles. That would also be a great way to avoid wasting time on AfD debates. Pascal.Tesson 00:05, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A couple suggestions

A few of the proposed guidelines seem a bit vague and hard to prove: "Is a song that helped define a specific genre of music", "Helped launch a notable record label", and "Is a particularly well-known song from a piece of musical theater, radio, film or television" in particular. I think there should also be an added standard: "The song has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person." similar to the ones on WP:BIO, WP:CORP, WP:SOFTWARE, etc. Thoughts? --Daniel Olsen 06:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] consensus ?

I was wondering if any consensus been reached concerning articles for singles? In the past, out of ignorance perhaps, I just assumed that a notible musician meant their singles were also notible. I have recently been informed that this is not necessarily the case. An article I recently created, Censor (single), was tagged for Speedy Deletion because there was "no notible info" in the article. I did not create the article so I could gush about how great the song is or anything like that, I just wanted to create a singles discog for Skinny Puppy. Any information would be appreciated. Naufana : talk 02:33, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea is that we would rather have articles with substantial amounts of information than articles that solely serve as discography entries — which, I would venture to say, are not articles at all. They're discography entries.
It's nice to be able to link to a song's article whenever it gets mentioned somewhere else, but if there's nothing to say about a song beyond CD and 12" single track listings, why are you making an encyclopedia article out of it at all? I used to have ideas about filling out some artist's entire singles chronology, before I realized that half the time there would be nothing to do other than copying other, better websites, and ones designed for navigating single releases at that.
I'm not sure what this has to do with notability anymore, really. However, if articles about songs about which nobody has anything to say were never written, we could sidestep a lot of notability issues in the same breath. –Unint 05:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My Chemical Romance AFDs

Hi, there are currently a few AFD debates going on involving individual songs, a few editors have decided to create an article for every single My Chemical Romance song. The majority of the articles are very short and contain mostly original research about the meaning of the song. The small amount of verifiable information could easily be placed in the article about the album. I have AFDed a few already that are clearly not notable enough and I was wondering if some of you could comment on the debates here, here and here thanks. Timkovski 22:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Just don't ruin your crusade by nominating singles, and I think you'll be okay. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Large or Medium Sized Country"

Forgive me if I'm treading ground that's been worn into mud already, but the idea that a song is notable (at least in part) if it charts in a "large or medium sized country" seems a bit risky to me. What this can potentially lead to is any flash-in-the-pan one-hit-wonder from Russia getting an entry (because Russia's most definitely a large country) but a very famous song from a small country like Liechtenstein or Togo not getting a look-in. Surely if the object of the exercise is to avoid systemic bias, a top 20 hit (or a consistent top 100 position) in any country should be enough to get a given song over the line? BigHaz - Schreit mich an 04:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I see no reason to change the charting requirement in that direction. So what if a "flash in the pan" gets an entry? If anything, I'd prefer a "charting hit in any country" wording, not a limitation on how high. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I'd only mentioned the "top 20" bit because that's the original wording about where the song needs to be placed in order to qualify. The only risk I can see with "charting hit" is that IMO different countries have different Top n charts, although this may not ultimately be a problem. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 11:56, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and for the record I've got nothing against one-hit-wonders from Russia or otherwise getting articles. I was just giving a hypothetical situation. BigHaz - Schreit mich an 11:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fully support this proposed guideline...

Fully support this proposed guideline, however in due course I think we should also have a WP:MUSIC/ALBUM guideline, because there are too many articles that just name the artist, the year, list the songs and don't say anything else... Addhoc 16:32, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

This is definitely a good idea, how do we go about making this official policy? Timkovski 18:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Not sure, possibly would be easier if this proposed guideline was approved, then merged into WP:MUSIC and we repeated the process for Wikipedia:Notability (albums)... Addhoc 23:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Has been downloaded a high number of times through digital download websites"

Question: I wonder, are there some download sites more reputable or more preferable to use as a source than others? And if so, how does one determine if song has been downloaded a high number of times? Cricket02 01:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd imagine that the more official ones (iTunes, possibly whatever Napster ended up becoming, those kinds of places) would have statistics. There are often download-specific charts published, IMO (I have a feeling that the Crazy Frog or something along those lines went to number 1 somewhere on downloads alone), which would also be a viable way of chasing this kind of thing up.
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