Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music

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[edit] Necessary Stub Missing

I was bored this morning, so I decided to sit down and start doing some stub sorting. I started tackling the album stubs, because that category has gotten pretty messy. I've noticed that there are a lot of new age albums and children's albums that are left without an appropriate stub. For instance, Raffi's albums could fit into maybe Folk or Pop, but I really don't think that is really the best solution. Is there someone who is willing to go through the trouble of making album stubs for new age and children's music? Warhorus 16:58, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delete all charts?

Editors may be interested to learn that an attempt is being made to delete music charts from wikipedia as "unencyclopedic", see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2005 Oricon Top 100 Singles and related votes. Kappa 18:31, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] does anyone want to help sort song stubs : )

I wanted to have a look at world music songs, and found this mess, so I decided it would be a good idea to sort it (Category:Song stubs). I've made a start, and I hope to go through a letter a day, but I thought I might mention it here, in case anyone was looking for a cheap boost to their edit count and wanted to stub sort. Smmurphy(Talk) 09:02, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure, sounds easy enough --Qirex 10:09, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sound samples

I think there ought to be more organization and discussion about sound samples. I don't have time to lead such a thing, but someone should... A good place to start would be a dedicated subpage of an article's talk, in which the sound samples used are listed along with a explanation of why that particular song is the best illustration of something useful in the text. Any thoughts? (a good example to consider might be music of the United States, because it's a well-known topic with lots of samples that can be discussed, and because I'd like to nominate it for FAC soon) Tuf-Kat 05:04, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I posted comments about this issue in Talk:Hip hop music and Talk:Salsa music. Samples should be chosen on a basis of what do they give to the reader. These samples should be encyclopedic enough, so that listening to them could really help understanding the article. I suggest we create a policy whithin this project discussing how samples for genres and artists articles should be chosen. And plus, we should decide where they should be placed: whithin the article in a box, or in a separate section at the end of the article. I prefer the second option. CG 13:30, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discographies with record labels

I have noticed in the discographies of some ambient musicians (namely Robert Rich and Steve Roach) that the record label is sometimes listed after the album title. How necessary is this information? My main concern is that if the label is not listed every time it could give the discography a cluttered or inconsistent look, especially since small labels are never likely to have articles dedicated to them. Justin Foote 20:36, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd like some guidance on where you think it's most appropriate to post links to streaming audio interviews with specific music artists. I posted a few within the External Links category. Is this the most appropriate location? Here's an example of a the types of interviews I'd like to post - *1983 Audio interview with Mick Jagger-discusses "Undercover" album Classic Rock Central Please advise. Thanks. 02:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)Azipfel 02:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Templates of Instruments

I thought of creating templates to put on all musical instrument pages, with links to all other musical instruments. I created "rough drafts" at:

Template:Instruments
Template:Woodwinds
Template:Brass
Template:String instruments
and there would be one more (not created yet) at Template:Keyboards

What do you think? --Mets501talk 20:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Having a template like those at string instrument is one thing, but they're far too large to place on every page on a listed instrument. Tuf-Kat 21:40, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps on the Musical instuments page and then on the Woodwinds, Brass, String instrument, and Keyboards pages. --Mets501talk 02:13, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I guess I really think we should have lists of instruments by various types. Standalone lists like list of string instruments would be better than a template. Tuf-Kat 02:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "is" versus "are," regarding band names

I can find several rules of grammar that state that band names that appear in plural forms (such as the Smashing Pumpkins), are singular entities. This means that such band names should be followed by the word "is," and not the word "are." I'm referring to such statements as, "Nine Inch Nails is an industrial rock band." I can find a few rules to support the opposite, but not many. I must state that this usage is American English, and not the British usage. The few bands that seem to commonly follow the British usage are British bands (in particular, the Beatles and the Stones). One of the few exceptions to the rules is when using the band name to refer to the individuals in it. For example, "in 1968, the Beatles went to studied under the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi." In any case, "are" should never follow the band name if the last word in the name is plural and it is not a collective term (such as Alice in Chains).

The reason I bring this up is because someone has been making a concerted effort to switch all bands with plural sounding names to "are." I would like to see some guideline set up to settle the matter.

What do you think? Should the band names be followed by "is" or "are"? Or should there be no guideline? I feel there should be a guideline to avoid edit wars, and that it should definitely be "is" (except when a case could be made for the British usage). Freekee 04:50, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I feel that band names that are references to the members, such as The Beatles, Ramones or The Smiths should be followed with an "are" or "were", and that bands with pluralised names that are merely abstract or do not refer to the members, such as Nine Inch Nails or Red Hot Chili Peppers, should be followed with "is" or "was". However, being a speaker of British English, that may be my personal bias. I do, however, think that some cases can be intuitively decided: "the Ramones was a band" strikes me as incorrect, even though it is an acceptable use, while "Red Hot Chili Peppers is a band" does not. --Switch 12:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm American, and I agree Alcuin 22:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greatest hits, Take 2

So people are still citing the "no greatest hits albums unless notable" policy here. However, given how things are done in practice right now (what with the size of Category:Greatest hits albums, plus however many of these haven't been caught yet), this doesn't really seem enforceable. Not to mention that if you give people darkseagreen as a color on the list, you expect them to make thorough use of it.

Of course, there are limits; compilations which were obviously tossed out by the record label, for example. I'm not really sure how to reliably make the distinction, though. On the other hand, I get the impression that people are generally pretty good about leaving out the cruft... Maybe some detailed case studies will help, but I think the rule as it stands right now is pretty much a dead rule. –Unint 23:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Can someone tell me what informational void such a category fills? Would anyone go looking for it? Freekee 03:29, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question: Bands singular or plural?

What is the proper method for referring to a band? Would it be correct to say "Nirvana are a great band?" I didn't think so, but some articles seem to do this, or they do this: "Nirvana is a great band. They play great music." Certainly it should be "The White Stripes are a great band." ...right? Help! Aldous Hooplah 00:27, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

See my question, two topics up. Freekee 05:23, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
And it should read, "Nirvana plays great music." ;-) Freekee 04:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, unless some perverted sadist has perpetrated a terrible conspiracy on me, it should read "Nirvana played great music". :( --Switch 13:52, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Naming convention

There's been some discussion on the WP:NAME talk page about a possible tweak to the naming convention guideline. Your feedback is welcome. --Muchness 01:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Piped "Year in Music" links

"Albums, bands and songs" #5 gives the guideline that you shouldn't pipe "year in music" links, the same as WP:PIPE. The entry concludes with this comment: In discography charts or other specialized forms, it is acceptable to use non-piped links to the year in music articles. I don't understand why discographies or specialzed forms would be mentioned specifically if it wasn't a typo, and should read that using piped links for such forms is acceptable. - dharmabum 20:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your question, but the policy and/or guidelines say that if you link to year in music you should not pipe it to display only the year. People used to do [[1967 in music|1967]]. This is always considered improper. So the article you mention implies that it may sometimes be proper to pipe that sort of link, and should be corrected.
Freekee 04:53, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
The WikiProject Music guidelines (which is what I'm talking about) don't say that it may sometimes be proper to pipe - what I find confusing is that it singles out discography charts or other specialized forms when they have exactly the same policy as the rest of the article. If it's incorrect to pipe the "year in music" links anywhere in an article, why does the end of the rule single out discographies while saying that the policy for them is the same as the rest of the article? It makes me suspect that either "non-piped" should read "piped", or the specific mention of them shouldn't be there. - dharmabum 08:12, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I believe it should read "piped", not "non-piped". In, for example, lists of musical occurences, it appears to be acceptable to use piped links, but not in most cases. That is the use I most often see. --Switch 13:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Dharmabum, you and I are in agreement. Switch, after some searching, I was able to find an example of piped links in a discography, but it doesn't seem like a very useful thing to do. -Freekee 16:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Not really useful, just commenting on the format I've seen used. --Switch 09:41, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed song infobox

I'm proposing a new infobox for songs over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs#Infoboxes. I guess fewer people are watching that page, but I'd like to get some more feedback on the infobox before thinking about implementing it. Please feel free to leave comments there. Flowerparty☀ 07:21, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Record labels

I'm getting a bit tired of finding articles about albums by British bands with only American record labels listed (and no note or explanation). Could we have a note somewhere that the primary record label should be the one in the country of origin? --kingboyk 03:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

That would be excellent. That doesn't even occur to many people. -Freekee 03:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Where to find data on recordings

Sorry if this is FAQ and newbie, but where do you find authoritative information about recorded music? Is there a searchers' guide to this? For books there are big library catalogs such as the Library of Congress, for movies we have IMDb, but is the mediocre Allmusic.com really all we have for music? Don't the big libraries or archives collect and catalog recorded music? The British Library Sound Archive has a catalog of 3.5 million recordings (how many albums are there in Allmusic.com?), but they don't seem to separate the various artists known under the same name. Has anybody tried to digitize old sales catalogs and out-of-copyright music review magazines? --LA2 00:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Allmusic claims to have only 872155 albums at a quick glance, with only about a third reviewed. (Not withstanding the numerous typos and missortings, of course.)
In my experience, successful research has depended mainly upon how dedicated the online fans of a given subject are in scanning old catalogues, magazines, and so on. Personally, I'm just now trying to appeal to a particular online community to pool together resources for research. This, of course, can only go so far as their interests.
As for long term, lasting projects... I have no idea. –Unint 07:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the comment. After having looked around, I'm now giving MusicBrainz a try. Initially I'm improving their linkage to Wikipedia for artist bios. --LA2 02:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
On a wider note, you make an interesting and worrying point. Why isn't recorded music archived and catalogued by national libraries?! It really ought to be. --kingboyk 17:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Music charts

See talk:Mezmerize. I think we should have a list of links to music charts that would be appropriate to include an article. This is what some casual googling turned up for me. Tuf-Kat 22:55, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Please expand, clarify and correct this list:

I can't make heads or tails out of that user talk page, but if you're looking for a place to add this list, how about putting it into Record chart?—Wahoofive (talk) 04:58, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I meant it should be on this page, so that people know how to find chart data to add to articles. I guess something similar should be at record chart too, but that's not what I'm talking about. Tuf-Kat 05:39, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)
I came here looking for the same thing, and was about to be bold and move your list to the project page but I discovered it doesn't really answer my question. I'm not so much interested in who compiles the charts, but how to find out chart position data for a given record. The KLF discography was recently turned down for Good Article status solely because it didn't cite references. I've now fixed that, but before resubmitting it I'd like to add chart data for at least the UK and the US and, of course, it needs to be from a reliable source. Can anyone point me in the right direction? (Hmm... the Guiness Book of Hit Singles has just occurred to me, is there such a book for albums, and are there such books for the USA? An internet resource would of course be preferable). --kingboyk 17:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Infobox Chord

I have proposed, at Template_talk:Infobox_Chord#From the root, that the infobox be modifed by adding a list of intervals from the root (I don't know how to do it myself) and would appreciate comments and assistance. Hyacinth 23:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Which infobox should I use for musical band?

Currently there are three templates:

There are different and I'm confused little bit. I think it should be standardised as soon as possible. Visor 14:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, Infobox Band is still the standard right now. The point of the other two is to develop a more specialized replacement for that, though progress has been slow.
Infobox musical artist is depreciated and all uses of it should be converted to another template. Infobox musical artist 2, I guess, should only be used for testing purposes at this point since the code is prone to change. –Unint 17:05, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

Another editor and I were having a discussion about categories. I thought I'd check here to see if anyone has an opinion on the matter. Let's say you've got a band with a category of its own, so you can easily find all the articles that are related to the band - albums, members, tours, former members, side projects, whatever (let's say, the Rolling Stones). Now let's say that the subject of one of the articles in the category has a category of its own (let's say, Mick Jagger). Here's the question: What would you put in the first level category - the second category, or the article itself? In other words, would you put Mick's article in the Stones category, or Mick's category in the Stones category? -Freekee 00:31, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:Mick Jagger should be in Category:The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger should be placed as the primary article in his cat: [[Category:Mick Jagger| ]]. Per Wikipedia:Categories, we place articles into the most precise cat and expect users to navigate to less precision. Jkelly 00:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
I've been reading the category pages for quite a while, and can't find consensus on that. Can you point to a specific guideline?
Here are some of my thoughts on the matter. (My examples concerning Mick are hypothetical.) Let's say Mick shows up on the cat:English Singers. Which is a subcat of British Singers. Subcat of Singers by Nationality. I find it annoying not to be able to see all the singers on the same list. But it sounds like a good idea from a neatness standpoint. But what if Mick had his own cat? Why should he be separated from all the other J artists on the page? And more importantly, why would I be interested in all the other articles related to him, when I'm looking for info on singers? What value would there be in seeing a link to Jerry Hall? Would it be more or less likely that people would want to see another category, versus the main article? Next question: does this likelihood change depending on the type of category? For instance, it seems to me that the Joe Walsh category would go well in the Eagles cat, but the Joe Walsh article would belong in the guitarist category.
-Freekee 03:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
I should have linked to Wikipedia:Categorization. Sorry about that. It sounds like what you want is a Wikipedia:Lists-type list of singers by nationality, sorted alphabetically. Categories can function that way, excepting the problem you point out with subcats vs. articles. You may find it useful to discuss this with editors who do a lot of thinking about Categories, perhaps at Wikipedia talk:Category schemes. Jkelly 03:38, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
No problem - I found that page. I'm not sure I want to go there with those people. I might. Not sure how far I want to take this. -Freekee 04:09, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

There's a bit of discussion on Talk:Syd Barrett about an external link to Napster for streaming of audio from the artist's works. It doesn't feel right to me, any more than a link to the iTunes store or an Amazon associate's shop would... has anyone else run into similar situations, and how were they handled? Xinit 19:50, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a Napster spam campaign on right now. Delete Napster links on sight. Jkelly 19:52, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
In general, though, is there an established protocol for dealing with links to music vendors; iTunes, emusic, amazon, etc? Xinit 21:30, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:External links we list the following under "Links to avoid"

  1. Links that are added to promote a site. See Wikipedia:Spam.
  2. Sites that primarily exist to sell products or services.
  3. Sites with objectionable amounts of advertising.

I suggest that if links to these vendors show up in a reference for some reason, the thing to do is to find a better reference, not just remove them. But there is no reason to have them under "External links". The artist's homepage will certainly have links to ways to purchase their product, and that homepage should be given in our articles. Jkelly 21:39, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Nice. Thanks. Xinit 21:42, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello, there are many links on Wiki that meet all three of those rules for deletion. Thousands, with much less useful content that is not free, Amazon.com for instance. They are commercial, they promote the site and they are supported by advertising. A link in the external links section that links to a musicians entire catalog that can then be listened to for free is no good? Im sorry but I think you are pulling my leg! Possibly JKelly is outside the US and is missing the part of the argument about the content being free. They say they are negotiating to make the content free world wide but I suppose if you checked from outside the US you would only see 30 second clips and may be put off by that. Waldzazi 22:24, 18 May 2006 (UTC)Waldzazi

Hello again. If you see other external links that have been added to articles for promotional purposes, please feel free to be WP:BOLD and remove them. Jkelly 22:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

No I think Ill leave the removal of useful links to free content to you Kelly. You could start with the hundreds or maybe thousands of links to IMDB. Good deleting! hehe Waldzazi 15:56, 19 May 2006 (UTC)Waldzazi

[edit] Discography articles

Browsing Category:Discographies, the fairly large collection of dedicated discography articles have very inconsistent introductions, despite serving very similar purposes. A lot are plain wrong, but I thought it would make sense to go through them systematically, so I wanted to know what people thought would make a good standard. Some approaches various articles have:

  • Saying nothing and getting on with the discography. Almost certainly wrong.
  • Beginning with...
    • A discography of...
    • This is a discography of...
    • This article is a discography of.../This page is a discography of...
    • This page lists albums, compilations and singles by...
  • ...the works of BAND NAME
  • ...BAND NAME
  • ...the Norwegian punk band BAND NAME
  • Bolding...
    • just the band name
    • discography of BAND NAME
  • Linking words... discography? location? genre? band name, obviously
  • Linking to related category of songs/albums by the band

My initial thoughts prefer the combination "This is a discography of the Norwegian band BAND NAME.", and not linking to song categories. Any thoughts? When there's consensus I'm up for going through the category and acting on it. BigBlueFish 20:46, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds generally good to me, some consistency would be nice. Are these articles as infected with the album-picture format as many popular artist pages have become (originally mainly one editor doing it, without bothering to discuss)? --Dhartung | Talk 08:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
They are but I think this is a valuable element of discographies. It shows the progression of the choice of artwork, and the artworks themselves often have very strong associations with the album, sometimes synonymous with the album, as with Dark Side of the Moon. Indeed, discography articles allow these galleries to be taken off the articles of artists with large discographies. BigBlueFish 14:45, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revising music standards

Most of the music standards on this page are basically the same as they were a couple years ago. I'm working on a rewrite to describe the modern consensus, with some elaborating and other modifications. Feel free to make changes or suggestions at User:TUF-KAT/MUSTARD. Tuf-Kat 03:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor key articles

I want to know what opinions there are about whether to use the natural minor or the harmonic minor scale when mentioning the scale notes on minor key articles. Please write your responses here.

[edit] Natural

[edit] Harmonic

  1. The harmonic minor is the one the chords of minor keys are based on. Georgia guy 15:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Misinformation

I would be grateful for advice on an odd problem. A template {{Czech composers}} was prepared by User:Antidote. It consists of photographs of three Bohemian composers (Antonin Dvorak, Bedrich Smetana, and Bohuslav Martinu), and of the Moravian composer Leos Janacek, and is headed 'The Great Four'. No explanation is provided. This template was orginally placed in the articles of the four composers concerned, again without any accompanying justification, reference or explanation in the article texts.

The appropriateness of this template and its use in the articles was queried, (not originally by me), as the term of 'The Great Four' is apparently unknown in the English-speaking world, and to judge from the comments of others, scarcely known in the Czech Republic. I asked User:Antidote for a source of 'The Great Four', and he was able to give only one passing reference on a website. The term is not used in any musical dictionary or history that I have consulted.

This seems therefore to be an attempt to foist a neologism as an enyclopaedic term, and therefore risks the quality of the Wikipedia pages concerned. Many musicologists (including myself) would also have serious doubts about placing Martinu on a similar level to the other three. Moreover in each article the photographs of the other three composers are of course irrelevant.

However attempts to remove the template on this basis have resulted in it being replaced, possibly by User:Antidote but using unlogged IPs (most recently 70.146.15.127).

This reinstitution of the template is vandalism of a sort, but how to report it and/or stop it? Any advice gratefully received.--Smerus 08:52, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EP in album names

Should EP album articles have "EP" in the article name, normally? I've noticed several examples where it's treated as part of the title: Live at Bull Moose EP (Album), The Good Life - OZ EP, Hybrid Theory EP — as opposed to where it's a disambiguator as Trigger (EP). The only examples I see that it clearly should not be separate are The Slim Shady EP and The Marshall Mathers LP. This isn't in naming conventions, or the MOS, so I wonder what Project people think. --Dhartung | Talk 21:20, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there's any question that those EPs should be renamed. Unless it's part of the official title of the release, the term should only be used as a parenthetical disambiguator. -Freekee 23:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Freekee. If it's part of the title keep it. Otherwise toss it. -Tastywheat 14:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Music samples guideline

I proposed a new guideline concerning Music and Song samples in Wikipedia:Music samples. It stills a draft. Your input is appreciated. CG 20:10, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Good work on starting this. Jogers (talk) 12:10, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EP sections

Here's another inconsistency I'm finding. Usually a Discography section is split into Albums and Singles. I'm seeing people move EPs under the Singles section, which doesn't seem right to me -- an EP is just a short album, and the industry tracks singles sales separately, unless that's changed. --Dhartung | Talk 17:29, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

That's a little confusing, since some EPs are album length, and some singles are EP length. I would say that most EPs are more like albums for the reasons you state - and those are pretty good reasons. Plus, many EPs really are albums, and not even short ones. The bands just insisted on calling them EPs to offer them at a lower price. State those reasons when you move them back to the albums. An alternative would be to create a separate EP section. If a particular EP is similar to a single (for example, has several versions of the same song), it could stay with the singles. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Freekee (talk • contribs) .
I would prefer to split the Discography section into Main albums, EPs, Singles and so on. Moving EPs under the singles section may be quite common partly because it's the scheme used by All Music Guide. Jogers (talk) 12:30, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DISAMBIGUATION URGENTLY NEEDED : Experimental music - Electronic "art" music - Electronic music - Electronic dance music - Modern dance music

I have a question for music fans: are you aware that electronic music is not electronic dance music? Did you ever realize that no university in the USA regards electronic music and the music for dancing as the same genre? Are you aware that this is not a music magazine? Are you aware of the meaning of the term encyclopedic? Are you aware of the difference between idiomatic expressions, slang and encyclopedic (formal) language? Are you aware that most of articles claiming to deal with "electronic music subgenres" are unsourced or grounded only on independent websites? Brian W 00:04, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

If you'd like to suggest something, feel free. Tuf-Kat 00:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, it's clear... I don't like modern electronic dance music at all... but it's for weeks and weeks that B Wilson is annoying everyone with his personal POV fight against modern dance music; he only wants to see the word used for "better" (more experimental) electronic music (the likes of tangerine dream etc... in the 70s, great music)... But his single personal POV should'nt determine how all these articles or called, certainly he shouldn't have a personal fight against names of musical genres as used by thousands of people just because it doesn't fit his POV... Check his reactions at Talk:psybient... I really liked to take him serious at first, since he likes some good music, but his uncomprehensible gibberish like his message above is getting annoying, so Wilson: you have lots of valuable edits on many articles, but please stop using WP as a vehicle for your own POV and definitions ! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LimoWreck (talk • contribs) .


I'm afraid that a big misunderstanding is occurring here. I love a number of music genres, and I don't hate any music style. I am only trying to "fight" against a mistaken use of words in Wikipedia. I admit that my English is not perfect, being somewhat influenced by German and Spanish/French structures; that doesn't prevent me from understanding and editing in and at an acceptable manner and level. Other editors are welcome to re-edit my sentences. Some music fans here are inventing new "genres" only grounding to the fact that the related word is currently used in common slang and sometimes on music magazines in reference to a style or sometimes a temporary fashion. Style is not genre , hopefully it's clear to everybody. Also, please note again that I don't hate modern dance music, old disco, hip-hop, black music in general and so on. I'll shortly edit a page in my user-space in order to provide a proof that I'm neutral, trustable and honest. I admit that I have a "somewhat non-neutral" attitude regarding one important thread: I do not believe that drugs (LSD, heroin, cannabis,....) can improve "spirituality" or "creativity" , there is no scientific evidence on this matter, but as you can see I'm not going around trolling Timothy Leary related articles and proponents. My recent edit at Jimi Hendrix has been welcome. Furthermore, I am also open to some "outsiding" modern research on psychology and related topics, such as Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen. Brian W 12:13, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Noticeboard created

At Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Noticeboard. This will be a great way to share resources with other Portals and WikiProjects. Λυδαcιτγ 02:09, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0

Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Arts WikiProject article table for articles of high quality. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us, or the World Music & Music Genres WikiProjects which are already using the bot. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks!

Suggestions follow. Λυδαcιτγ 14:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Vital articles

First let's look at the vital articles in music:

Here's the vital music genre articles:

And the vital composer and musician articles:

These are a subset of the key articles. Now we need to branch sideways and down from these "anchors" to find the rest of the key articles. Judging from Wikipedia:Key article, we need about 10-20 key articles for every vital article. Λυδαcιτγ 14:39, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

That's perfect, a superb approach to use! Of course WP:VA isn't a perfect guide, you may want to consider musical instruments, major musical works, even a little music theory. Thanks, this will really help us organise the music listings. Walkerma 17:22, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mix tapes?

Do mix tapes deserve articles? They're not official releases, are they? what's the criteria? -- Mikeblas 14:40, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like a mix tape -- even one produced by a well-known artist -- is really notable, and even if it deserves mention (say, for promoting an obscure artist to success), a whole article seems excessive. --Dhartung | Talk 01:59, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not kidding at all. I'd agree that the're not notable, or that I didn't have a corrector (or current) definition. There's a whole category for them: Category:Mixtape albums. As I clean up ambiguous references to the hip hop topic, I'm finding that there are artist articles for people who have no more claim to fame than a mixtape or two. --Mikeblas 03:15, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree with everything said above. It's true that are surely getting out of control with their exponentially growing number, so I decided to create a category to keep an eye on them and tried to establish a standard on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 6#Category:Mixtape albums but noone bothered to deal with it. So I kept on handling the situation (changing infobox colors, constantly searching for new entries and categorize them, even looking for notability in case of 50 Cent is the Future, which is a charted mixtape). So If we can form a unit that would set up standards for them (I think The first thing should be a separate infobox color) and stuff like this, then I'm in. Lajbi Holla @ meWho's the boss? 18:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Note:The same reply was posted on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject hip hop. Lajbi Holla @ meWho's the boss? 18:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New articles

Hi guys. Just to inform you that Music criticism and Music appreciation have just been created as stubs. Please contribute. Cheers -- Szvest 15:24, 29 June 2006 (UTC) Wiki me up™

I'll check it out.Dan 17:02, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quality standards

I have set up a more detailed replacement for this page's loose list of guidelines. It is also a music-specific version of Wikipedia:Cleanup. Take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD. Tuf-Kat 19:30, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks lovely. I think a page like that has been needed for a looooooong time. - THE GREAT GAVINI {T-C} 08:49, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discography format?

Is there a standardized format for discography (not a seperate article, but within the article for the band)? Is there a guideline for spliting the discography into a separate article? TheHYPO 20:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

See WP:MUSTARD and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works). --Dhartung | Talk 19:28, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tours..

What is the proper format when talking about tours? What I mean is, songs are put in "'s and album names are italised. So what about tours? — Prodigenous Zee - 15:41, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

See the revision of this page's standards at WP:MUSTARD, specifically Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD/Format. They are not formatted beyond the ordinary rules of capitalization. Tuf-Kat 16:17, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A written guideline

I just wanted to know if the project would back a formalization of the format used for category:band templates members. I've been noticing a lot of more or less malformed templates popping up and having the guidelines for these written in the category page would reduce the work that needs to be done. Circeus 21:30, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I am sorry for opening up the floodgates. (I once thought that categorizing all of them would actually lead to deletions. That was then.)
So, what do we have at this point... All-redlink templates, templates comprising of ~5 links, and templates with "mk.1" and "mk.2/3" of the band lineup.
Yes, let us do this. Work out guidelines here and maybe they can be appended to WikiProject Musicians, for what that's worth. Maybe that can then branch out to a standarization of the entirety of Cat:Navigational templates. (Sometimes I wonder if a meta-template wouldn't just make things much easier, to that end.) –Unint 21:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I was thinking about a guideline for the design (e.g. colors, font sizes, wordings), rather than bands that can have it (see the arguments at template talk:Pink Floyd and Template talk:Arctic Monkeys). Red link farms are always bad, but so far are few and far between.
I have been wondering about these new templates with "mk.1" and "mk.2/3", which is all Greek to me. Jargon if I ever saw any. What DOES it mean? Circeus 00:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Design: That's what I mean by all those things, particularly the meta-template, i.e. a template that could be included in all such templates for formatting purposes. Of course, as seem at WP:AUM not everyone supports such things, though that guideline didn't actually pass.
mk.1: Those are used to split up the discography by different band lineups. IMO overly complicated, not universally understood (as seen here), and encourage people to make a big deal out of band lineups even more. (They already do enough of that, believe me.) –Unint 00:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] proposal

  • A template as a width pf 90%, unless it cannot fill that width, in which case none is defined
  • The main header uses #6699CC as a background color, with white text
  • Subheaders use lightgrey or #D3D3D3 as a background-color
    • The standard subheaders are "Discography" and "Related articles" or "Related content"
  • All content (including subheaders) except the main header uses a 90% font size, the main header does not have its font-size changed
  • There is no "members" header. Members are listed directly under the main header
    • Former members are listed directly under current memebrs, which arethen bolded. "Former members" is used as a single label. THismay be replaced with a list or category link, if they exist.
  • "Discography" is only linked if there is an article, it uses a piped link.
  • The discography is sorted by type: Albums, extended plays, singles, songs, dvds, not by band format.
    • Whether to merge some labels (such as "albums" and "extended plays") is left to the template creator
    • Labels should not be linked
    • Labels should always be in sentence case
    • "extended plays" should be used instead of "EPs"
    • Do not add a section if almost all the content is made of red links.
  • Related articles may link to directly related bands, side projects or peoples, but not to (for example) genres
    • If categories are linked, then change the header to "related content"
    • Do not link album or song categories if all their articles arealready linked in the template
  • If the template is sorted in the band category, use a character such as the omicron (µ) as a sortkey.

Circeus 00:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Issues: some templates use the second "members" row for "auxiliary" members, rather than former members. Sometimes membership isn't really a black-and-white issue, see. I was considering that maybe the members section might be the only section that needs to be deregulated, if only for sanity's sake.
Also, I would venture to suggest that occasional non-standard headings are needed. Some bands have certain "special features" that I think are highly appropriate for using the templates to display at a glance. (Ask me to make a list later.)
Otherwise, looks good; however, seeing what you've run into in the past, the main problem is going to be convincing everyone that standarization is a good idea. (It almost certainly is; just look at {{Elvis Costello}}.)
(Speaking of which... Do you plan to apply similar standards to the solo musician templates? In those cases there won't be "members" sections, per se, but there might very well be lists of backing musicians or other related people that editors will want on top, rather than in "related articles" at the bottom.) –Unint 22:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
members section: Sure, but I will continue to kill any superfluous "current member" label on sight.
I have not touched to the musician templates cat. I'd venture that in 90% of the cases, stuff like that horror you point to should be condensed in a discography thing, much like I did back in... December, I think? for the band ones. Circeus 23:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Touring label

Hi! I just noticed the new article touring label, which is not written in a particularly encyclopedic style. At the end of the article, it mentions that the term was coined by G. David Daniels of WCA Entertainment, who also appears to be the author of the article. (User:Ddaniels@wca-entertainment.com). If someone who is familiar with the music industry could glance over the article, and sort out whether it's describing a recognized phenomenon or just promoting WCA Entertainment, it would be great. Thanks! FreplySpang 17:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Copied request to Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Noticeboard. Λυδαcιτγ 00:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
The term appears to be made up. I put it on AFD. (Probably PROD would have worked as well, afterthought.) --Dhartung | Talk 08:04, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Beatles

The Beatles is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 15:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] MySpace and other external links

The external links guideline is being revised, and a few people have brought up the issue of official MySpace pages, which seem to be considered acceptable on a case-by-case basis, but I'm concerned that if the guideline does not reflect the 2006-era usage of MySpace Music sites for bands, they'll be subject to arbitrary mass deletion as recently happened at a few articles I watch. Please add your point of view to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:External links#Links normally to be avoided. --Dhartung | Talk 07:53, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AC/DC external links

A user seems to have a problem with the external links over at AC/DC and third opinions would be appreciated. Make sure to look at thearticle history. (see also rant here). Circeus 00:06, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infoboxes

I was trying to put {{Infobox Instrument}} on all musical instrument pages. Anyone care to help? (See an example at Violin) —Mets501 (talk) 15:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I just made an infobox for bass clarinet, modeling the violin one but I was confused because there appears to be an inopertive section of the violin infobox: the section "musicians" which is not part of the template and which does not show up in the infobox. Should we change the template to include this? MarkBuckles (talk) 17:36, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, you're right. I'll add the section to the Infobox. Do you think that the section should list specific people or a link to a list (or category) of players of that instrument? —Mets501 (talk) 17:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I think linking to lists or categories would be best. Linking to specific people would open up a hornet's nest - who are the most famous, who's worthy to be included - questions which are inherently subjective. MarkBuckles (talk) 06:56, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Soiled Doves

The noticeboard has nothing on "bands that meet notability" so I'm brigning it here: Does Solid Doves meet the WP:MUSIC guidelines? Two album and 500 copies of a three-song CD. I know nothing about music, so I wanted to ask here intead of prodding it or sending it to AFD. Hbdragon88 21:52, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible date vandalism

Could somebody take a look at the edits being done by Aleppo1979 (talk • contribs)? There are no edit summaries and a bunch of subtle date changes, so I'm not sure what's going on. Thanks. Mike Dillon 02:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't look like vandalism. I've welcomed the new user and left him a note about sources and edit summaries. If you have some conflicting sources for those dates, it might be best to ask him directly on his talk page or on the article talk page. MarkBuckles (talk) 06:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Category  : Music scenes (a valid path)

I've just started the Category:Music scenes (grounding on the article Music scene) and added it in a few pages. This will prevent edit wars and long unuseful discussions in the future, indeed nowadays many Wikipedians are involved in discussions arguing that " X is not a real style or music genre, but simply a music scene ". Dr. Who 04:20, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

First of all, I think you've misnamed the article, Music Scenes (bands). "Scenes" should not be capitalized, and it includes a needless disambiguation. Second, please edit the text out of Category:Music scenes (categories are populated automatically) and include a brief description of the cat. Beyond all that, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Looking the new category, it seems to be a list of musical genres. I would expect a scene to be some sort of social happening. There is nothing in the genre articles to indicate this, so there needs to be an article about the Dixieland scene before it can be included in a category about scenes. So... please explain the point behind your actions. -Freekee 04:44, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
The article Music Scene (bands) has been created by someone else, not me. With all due respect, I will not comment your sentence I would expect a scene to be some sort of social happening. Dr. Who 04:56, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Category:Music scenes should work also with a number of unassessed music genres, subgenres and styles, or with those that are linked to a peculiar location and time, such as jazz (New Orleans jazz and various latin jazz "sub-genres"), world music, electronic dance music genres ("Detroit" techno, "Goa" trance, "Euro" Trance) or even formerly active genres that later become something different, such as
Darkwave ------> Gothic rock
Krautrock------> German electronic music, new age, ambient music.

I am not planning to add more information here becouse I am busy. I thank in advance all those that will appreciate this effort and will help to progress that page. by Dr. Who 13:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DeBence Antique Music World

I just wrote DeBence Antique Music World. I'm not familiar with your project, and have no idea how you handle such articles, or where exactly this fits in the hierarchy or in which categories it goes. Help? Thanks. --Chris Griswold 05:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 02:12, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Joining?

How do I join this WikiProject? The main page said to post here, so here I am. Andrew 01:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, nobody's ever made a members list. (Or a to-do list, collaborations, or much of any coordination to speak of.) If you've been working on music-related articles and are posting here, consider yourself joined. (As was demonstrated at WP:ALBUM recently, as well.) Oh, and new posts go at the bottom. –Unint 02:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah. Well, then, I guess I'll start seeing what I can do! Andrew 15:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Userbox for members!

I created a userbox for members! It is located at Template:User WP Music. Take a gander...

This user is a member of WikiProject Music.





[edit] Dream Theater

Dream Theater is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 17:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 17:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Musical examples (notation)

I would just like to lend my services to put notated musical examples (such as in Homophony) in all kinds of music articles to which it would apply. If anyone knows of an article that needs notated examples, I would be happy to notate the examples myself and upload them to Wikipedia. Additionally, if anyone else would like to help with this, perhaps we could start some kind of group within the WikiProject to do this. Thoughts? Ideas? -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 06:05, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Challenge to inclusion of AMG links

Please see discussion here; a user is contesting the inclusion of AMG links in articles as "linkspam," and has repeatedly removed the link from The Future Sound of London article. Musician articles are not my usual thing, so I thought this would benefit from project regulars weighing in to show that the community supports AMG as an external resource. I believe that article is the only one on which this user has removed the AMG links. Thanks, Postdlf 14:44, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

AMG and Discogs are both mentioned at Wikipedia:Notability (music)#Resources. -- Xtifr tälk 18:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some copy-editing help with an FAC?

  • Hiya, I've been working on Sasha (DJ) for quite some time now but haven't managed to get it up to FA status yet. It pretty much just needs a couple goings-over from someone with copy-editing experience. Basically, it just needs someone to go through and pick out any wording redundancies or any other sort of awkward sentences. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Wickethewok 18:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Context in Lead section

Per Wikipedia:Lead section, most music article start with "In music,..." believe that we need some sort of guideline as to which articles begin with "In music theory", "In musicology", or "In music and music theory" etc. If there is such a guideline, please point me to it. If not, we should create it. Hyacinth 02:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
  • User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
  • User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Little help?

Here's the situation: A while back, someone created a speculative article about an upcoming song at Lithium (Evanescence song). A few other editors and myself changed it to redirect to the parent album because a) it's not notable according to the WP:MUSIC guidelines, b) it hasn't been released yet so we don't know if it will ever be notable enough for its own article, and c) it screws up a lot of the links related to the Nirvana song that is actually notable. (At the same time, Lithium (song) was moved to Lithium (Nirvana song) despite discussion to the contrary; then Lithium (song) was turned into a disambiguation page, breaking a hundred links from Nirvana articles.) To try to get around it, somebody moved "Lithium (Evanescence song)" to Lithium (Evanescence), which obviously is not the preferred title per WP:NAME. Now somebody else has also created a weird soft-redirect at Lithium (Single). I'm feeling overwhelmed by the fanboy crowd, and I figured I'd post here to see what everyone thinks. Are we being unreasonable? At this point, whether we keep it or not, the whole thing is a mess and could use some attention. Thanks. Kafziel Talk 16:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inclusion of Virtual band into WikiProject Music

Would it be possible for this article (which has been on the Wiki for about a year) to be included as a Wikiproject Music article? --JB Adder | Talk 02:21, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is Phylum Sinter notable?

Hey there folks. I'm not exactly well versed in the music scene myself, so I thought I'd bring this to you. I tagged the article Phylum Sinter, but User:Phylum sinter thinks that qualifies under WP:MUSIC. Could anyone more knowledged in the subject than myself comment at Talk:Phylum Sinter? Thanks much. --Brad Beattie (talk) 16:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Musical instruments project

There now is a proposed project dealing with articles on musical instruments at Wikipedia:WikiProject/List of proposed projects#Musical Instruments. I would encourage all those interested in participating in such a project to add their names there. Thank you. Badbilltucker 20:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template [hide] function

Anyone here handy with templates? Could someone set {{Iranian musical instruments}} to default as hidden? In some articles the template is much bigger than the article itself. Thank you, Fang Aili talk 21:54, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

[edit] Wikiproject Music subsection for Percussion?

Is there a Wikiproject Percussion / subproject in wikiproject music for percussion? I've been looking around and I cannot find one. Bagpiping Scotsman 04:16, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Saxophone

Saxophone is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 03:02, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uncategorised music stubs

Over at the Songs wikiproject, I suggested an Cat:uncategorised songs cleanup category, on the pattern of the seemingly very successful Cat:uncategorised albums. No takers yet, but what about a broader Cat:uncategorised music articles, or perhaps slightly more specifically, Cat:uncategorised music stubs (that being the most ready source of such, and where I'd be bot-populating them from). Would there be interest in, and support of, such a scheme here? Alai 20:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed changes at Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/Tables for charts

WikiProject Music editors might want to know that there's been some recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Tables for charts about adding some new guidelines on lists of chart positions for singles (and now for albums): how much chart information an article needs and the best ways to present it. Anyone with even a remote interest in the topic is encouraged to look over the proposals and add an opinion or two. The relevant discussions are at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Tables for charts#Component charts and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Tables for charts#Chart trajectories. Thanks all! --keepsleeping slack off! 02:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] wikiproject template

I would like to place a template associating List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry with WikiProject Music. Is there a template to do so? TonyTheTiger 19:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Succession boxes

Should they have their own section headings? I mean, they don't really fit under the ones that they are (in the articles that have them) -- AshadeofgreyTalk 22:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect years for Grammy Awards

Apparently the titling of every single Grammy Awards of [Year XXXX] page has systematic errors. As the Grammy Award article states: "Years reflect the year in which the awards were presented, for music released in the previous year." But the official year scheme dates the awards from the year the music was released. This means that the official 2005 Grammy winners, for example, are listed on Wikipedia under Grammy Awards of 2006. This is quite confusing (if not blatently wrong) for a supposedly encyclopedic site. Please discuss at Talk:Grammy Award. -- Rynne 15:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New page: Wikipedia:Requested recordings

I have just started Wikipedia:Requested recordings, to try to get more free content recordings of PD music to help illustrate Wikipedia's music articles. Please volunteer if you can, and suggest pieces for recording which you think would be a good illustration for an article. Spread the word! Mak (talk) 20:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other language songs and albums

Hi! When mentioning a song title or an album title that is in a language that is not English, I would like to give a translation — see Dr. Space Dagbok for an example. How should this best be formatted? /skagedal... 17:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks fine. You might put a note in the parentheses that those words are the translation, though. -Freekee 06:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Music related page move for KISS

See Talk:KISS (band). Please add your thoughts, whatever they maybe. 205.157.110.11 03:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Flags

(moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alternative music) This has come up at U2. Should articles on bands automatically have a national flag in their articles? WP:FLAG would seem to say "no", and a flag looks odd on some bands' articles. Any comments? --Guinnog 08:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

No. It's redundant, and wastes Wikimedia's bandwidth. What's the main aim of adding flags to a band article? CloudNine 15:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Do you know of any policy about this? --Guinnog 17:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm against the flag. Reasoning with the people who think it's cute is, of course, such fun. I'll be sure to refer people here if when the need arises again - Dudesleeper 19:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't there be a serious consensus built before you actually refer people here? Anyhoo a policy would be handy for infoboxes, what we have now is a mix of bands and people who have flags and those who don't. Thats not the way it should be on this site. It should be uniform.

And whether the boxes have flags or not, it looks nice sometimes but I don't care really Billtheking 19:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can see, this is the place to build a consensus. So far nobody has come up with any arguments for using flags. --Guinnog 19:54, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree w/ Guinnog actions. -- Szvest - Wiki me up ® 21:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Flags add more to the visual appearance of the page. I'd agree it is not really neccesary but having it in there makes it better to look at. Can anyone give me a reason as to why flags should not be on band articles? I seem to see reasoning for, which is basically it looks nice, but that is more than the people who are against it have given. It shouldn't be a requirement for a band infobox to have a flag, but if somone adds one I see no logical reasoning behind removing it. --E tac 22:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

"Here are some reasons not to add unnecessary flag icons:
  • They add no information to the article that you can't get from reading it
  • They are more difficult to read for visually impaired people (e.g. colour blind or those who rely on text-to-speech software)
  • They make articles look like Pokémon trading cards
  • The Confederate States of America is not a country, nor is North America
  • They certainly don't make the pages load faster on a slow connection
  • Flags are not necessarily easier to recognize than country names. Take, for example, Australia Flag of Australia and New Zealand Flag of New Zealand.
  • Flags open the door to disputes unrelated to article content. Is it London Flag of England or London Flag of United Kingdom?
  • Flags place unequal emphasis on location, especially in infoboxes. With a flag, Paul McCartney is English Flag of England. Without a flag, he is an English rock singer and songwriter who was in The Beatles." (from WP:FLAG) --Guinnog 22:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You are kidding right? Most bands that are really famous have pages that are full of images of band members and album covers and the like that are just there for eye candy, and those would add a lot more time to loading a page than a little tiny flag graphic. --E tac 22:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I am not kidding. Album covers are another matter; in most cases these are breaches of fair use and should also be removed from articles. We can remove them next if you like. Flags are only relevant in the case where a person or group has officially represented their country, like sports teams, in my opinion. --Guinnog 22:29, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Adding flag icons to band infoboxes is just clutter, unhelpful to the reader, and may mess up automated machine parsing of infobox data. Please don't do this. In case it comes up, I also feel the same way about provincial coats of arms, city seals, family crests, musical instrument icons, etc. Jkelly 22:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe this discussion on flags is pretty new, and yet some people have already taken upon themselves to remove them wherever they find them - despite the fact no official policy yet exists, only a brief discussion here and an "opinion" article on the flags talk page. Shouldn't a decision be reached before action is taken? To me flags are small, simple, and yes visually appealling. Most icons seem to be about 0.3 KB large - used in moderation that is neither a bandwidth or speed problem. The examples given above are poor, as there is little dispute Aerosmith is an American band or The Beatles were English, so there would be one flag, not many as the "Pokemon" comparison indicates. There really are bigger battles to be waged (or time better spent elsewhere), but so far this "debate" seems to be one or two opinions - not exactly what I what call consensus. Z00ropean 05:39, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, we have so far had me, CloudNine, Dudesleeper, User:FayssalF, Jkelly (5) against, Billtheking who doesn't care really, and E tac and now yourself (2) in favour. Do you have any other compelling arguments in favour of them, other than their being "visually appealing"? The default otherwise is they should go, unless there is a consensus to keep them. --Guinnog 06:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Well do you have any real compelling argument against them, other then them "being visual clutter"? --E tac 08:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I posted a list of eight reasons just above here. --Guinnog 16:54, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

They look nice (sometimes), but that's the only real plus to using them. The information must still be in text form, so they could be considered redundant. -Freekee 18:28, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that they look nice; but I think the arguments against their inclusion certainly outweigh any aethetic appeal. It also opens up a whole new (and very unproductive) area of disputes. --Guinnog 18:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


Well I read your reasons for argument against and they don't make much sense, nor is this a policy, yet you have already seem to have taken it upon yourself to start removing flags from all band infoboxes.

"Here are some reasons not to add unnecessary flag icons":

  • "They add no information to the article that you can't get from reading it"
    • The same would go for images, or little discographys with thumbnails, or any type of graph or table.
  • "They are more difficult to read for visually impaired people (e.g. colour blind or those who rely on text-to-speech software)"
    • If you are visually impaired you will probably have trouble reading text as well
  • "They certainly don't make the pages load faster on a slow connection"
    • No it doesn't. Images add a lot more time than a tiny flag icon. Even if it did take longer, which it does not, who would care if the flag takes longer to load, since according to you noone wants to look at it anyways.
  • "Flags are not necessarily easier to recognize than country names. Take, for example, Australia Flag of Australia and New Zealand Flag of New Zealand."
    • The country name is also included in the infobox itself or in the article.
  • "Flags open the door to disputes unrelated to article content. Is it London Flag of England or London Flag of United Kingdom? "
    • Then location of the band must also be disputed which is highly unlikely for a notable band on wikipedia. If you cannot come to a clear decision on where the group is from, it would be best to not use a flag in that case.

--E tac 18:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Please see Jkelly's comment above. Flags are even worse in infoboxes. Also, for all UK bands, there will be possible disputes between the UK flag and the England, Scotland or whatever flags, as in the London example above. --Guinnog 19:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
In case my comment above was opaque to someone, Google.com has recently started parsing infobox data from Wikipedia as part of their search service. This is an excellent argument for infoboxes (which I wasn't always that enthusiastic about), a part of our mission of providing reusable content, and a nice feather in the cap for us in our goal of "making the internet not suck". With this in mind, we should avoid filling up the infoboxes with decorative internal wikiformatting, unparseable image suntax, or anything else of the kind. Frankly, even if this were not the case, I'd find the flag icons gimmicky and a poor design choice, and I would hope that the other editors' comments above would be enough to convinve those adding them to stop it, but given that we're now serving this information to machine parsers, it has become important to keep the data clean and readable. Jkelly 19:39, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Images can mess up a pages display as well, in those cases they should be removed or attempted to be placed in away that does not disrupt the page, the same would go for flags. If you can't fit it in an infobox without it looking bad than it should be removed. In cases where it is disputed as to what flag should be used such as an english or uk flag, an vote could be held on the bands talk page to reach a consensus. Potential problems solved. --E tac 19:32, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
It seems you have misunderstood Jkelly's point above. Some of us might not want to have regular "votes" on which national flag to use for a given band. Take U2 as an example; two of the band were born in England Flag of England, two in Ireland Flag of Republic of Ireland. As a result we already have people disputing the description of them as being "Irish". Another example would be Joe Strummer, who was born in Turkey Flag of Turkey but lived most of his life in England Flag of England. What nationality was he? In a sense your point about it being the same for all images holds some merit, but I would hope that any pictures we use add value to an article. My point is that these icons do not and actually cause a lot of trouble that we do not need. --Guinnog 20:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I think you go a bit too far with your argument in this last statement. "England flag vs. UK flag" is certainly a very real problem, but as far as Joe Strummer goes, distinctions between entirely separate entities like Turkey and England will exist even without the icons, i.e. in the text. Furthermore, {{Infobox musical artist}} has separate fields for "place born" and "origin of musical career". (Actually, elucidating the proper use of "Origin" to editors, as defined by the infobox page, should sort out this problem entirely. On the other hand, the infobox also currently recommends flag icons in the proper usage examples.) –Unint 23:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's take a step back here. The "Origin" field exists solely for the purpose of writing a line of text describing a geographical location. No matter how many flags we add, the flag cannot substitute for the text or make it possible to write less text. Isn't that the point of little flag icons? To reduce the volume of text and code, not add to it? –Unint 23:51, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. The infobox example should be amended in that case unless we can see a consensus here for adding flag icons. The England/UK example is indeed a very real problem, and the addition of a flag to the text can never result in reducing the volume of text and code but can only ever increase it. --Guinnog 00:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Please contribute to the centralised discussion on flag icons at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Flag icons - manual of style entry?. Please add comments over there, not here. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:58, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chart and Sales References

Can anyone point me at some useful resources for referencing things like highest chart positions and sales classifications (gold, platinum, etc)? I have AFI (band) on my watchlist and there seems to be a fair bit of changing these numbers. Unfortunately, I have no idea which are the correct ones. It would be useful if I could put in the definitive numbers along with references, but don't know where to look. →Ollie (talk • contribs) 20:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Trombone

I am currently working on this article and would like to eventually get it approved as a Good Article. Any help, comments, and suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks, Dar-Ape 22:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Italian Bellotti Cymbals and Category:Cymbal manufacturers

Hi folks! User:Pajaro4 has filed a request for assistance with the article Italian Bellotti Cymbals. He doesn't understand why the article was put up for speedy delete. In looking into the issue I noted several other similar articles on cymbal manufacturers grouped in Category:Cymbal manufacturers. My request here is that people who have some interest and knowledge of the situation to take a look at both the Italian Bellotti Cymbals article and the related articles in the Cymbal manufacturers category. My questions are: 1) Is the Italian Bellotti Cymbals worth keeping? 2) Should all those Cymbal manufacturers articles be grouped together in one meaningful article - as they stand they appear to me to be rather weak, and open to nomination for deletion. 3) Is it worth getting together some notability criteria for musical instruments that editors can look to as a guideline? Regards SilkTork 08:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The two articles particularly in question seem to be Italian Bellotti Cymbals and Pasha Cymbals. They both seem quite notable enough to me, and the articles both cite sources to establish this notability. ISTM that the onus of proof is on the speedy delete proposer, in that they should show some reason they have chosen to disregard these sources. Andrewa 08:06, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Guitar icons

I've noticed a few people adding little guitar icons next to genres of music (namely Rock). I high doubt this is necessary...in my opinion, it's sillier than a flag icon! We don't need them, right? DiscordantNoteCntrbtns 19:47, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It's ridiculous, not the least because, oh, most other genres have no corresponding visual icon. Stamp it out before it spreads. –Unint 20:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Like no other genres use guitars. *rolls eyes* -Freekee 00:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New album notability guidelines?

I would like to direct your attention to User:Ryanpostlethwaite/WP:MUSIC (album) (talk page), where we are drafting up new criteria for album notability. The single criterion we have right now just won't do! If you disagree with what is there, please make suggestions! − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:20, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lists of artists

I keep on coming across lists of artists in different particular genres of music and was wondering if perhaps we could begin some sort of initiative to make those lists more useful. Most of them have become so long that distinguishing the more influential/important bands from the rest is almost impossible (see List of post-punk bands for instance). Perhaps we could start ranking these artists by the number of albums they have produced so that it is more obvious who the influential bands are. Theshibboleth 09:53, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heavy metal singers

If anyone wants they can use this template {{User Metal Singer}} on their user page... it looks something like this:

This user growls in a heavy metal band.

.

[edit] When bands change their name?

I've not sure what's meant to happen when a band changes their name - for instance, Stutterfly has done this, and someone has now created a new page for their new name (Secret And Whisper). Is this what is supposed to happen, or should the existing Stutterfly page be renamed to Secret And Whisper, and mention the band's Stutterfly era? Any help on this would be great. H4cksaw (talk) 10:59, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I definitely think there should only be one article, but other notable names should be redirects. Per the namual of style, all (notable) names should be mentioned and bolded in the first paragraph. In almost all cases, I would think the current name would be the correct one to use. The only exception might be a case where a band achieved international fame under one name and then changed it, but this is unlikely to be a common case, since an internationally-known name is a valuable asset for anyone. The only other thing I can think of to say is to be careful not to confuse it with the case where some (even most) band-members re-form under a new name. It may be a little hard to tell the difference in some cases, but if that is what happened, then the new band should probably have a separate article (although possibly not until the new band has gone on to achieve its own notability). Xtifr tälk 20:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the article, in this case I think it fits the definition of re-formed. Singer left, new singer joined, "dramatic change in sound", new name. Thus, I have no objection to two articles. On the other hand, Van Halen likely only needs one, no matter how many times David Lee Roth quits.--Dhartung | Talk 22:29, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] It's a reliable source...but is it notable?

I am coming here for a bit of an expert opinion and suggestion on how to proceed. An editor has recently added an extensive quote to the "Reactions to Success" section of the James Blunt article. I have no doubt that it is accurate, but I am not convinced that a critique by a musician from another style of music is particularly worthy of inclusion into the article. It also tends to weigh the article on the "criticism" side. Since this is one of the few articles I watch regularly (I don't edit that often), I'm perhaps vulnerable to a WP:OWN or WP:POV allegation if I edit this out without a neutral editor concurring. Could folks comment on this - perhaps even directly on the talk page of the article? Thanks. Risker 02:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project Award

A WikiProject Award or Topical Barnstar for this project has been proposed. As the project does not appear to have yet been notified, in order for the image to be improved and eventually selected, members of the projected are invited to comment on the proposal at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals#Music Barnstar or WikiProject Award (The image currently being used is not yet marked as an official award). Laïka 16:50, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Underpopulated Music categories

I've created a category Category:Underpopulated Music categories and have moved most of the music related categories in Underpopulated categories to this category if you notice a category in there that should be moved to underpopulated music categories you can move it there by replacing {{popcat}} with {{popcat|Underpopulated Music categories}}.Irate velociraptor 16:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help on Homophony

This article could use some help, especially in the area of history, and I figured that people around here might know a thing or two. Anyone care to lend a hand? -- Cielomobile talk / contribs 02:43, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Charts (again)

I have two questions. First, some articles are being loaded with charts (from Lithuania, Romania... well, just about everywhere). If things continue in this way, many articles will contain little but chart statistic. Could there be some decision on which charts are rleevant? For a Lithuanian release, the Lithuanian chart would be relevant, but for U.S., British, etc., releases, a cerain set of charts are accepted — something like that.

Secondly, I've come across a few articles on charts (or chart-issuing companies) that have been turned into mirrors of the charts themselves, going back years (see, for example, VSpot Top 20 Countdown). As we're not a chart-listing magazine, that seems clearly inappropriate. Any coments? --Mel Etitis (Talk) 08:58, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

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