Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums

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This is a WikiProject, a collaboration area and open group of editors dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of a particular topic, or to organizing some internal Wikipedia process. Please see the Guide to WikiProjects and the Directory of WikiProjects for more information.

Shortcuts: WP:ALBUM WP:ALBUMS

WikiProject Albums is an organization of Wikipedians dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of all kinds of musical albums. We seek ways of simplifying album pages so users can get the basic information fast, creating high-quality new pages, ensuring a standardized format and make articles as informative as possible. There is also a WikiProject Albums Featured Albums Project, which seeks to coordinate efforts to get as many albums as possible promoted to Featured status.

Feel free to ask questions on the talk page. Below is a basic guide to writing an article on a specific album of music; this is only a guide and you should feel free to personalize an article as you see fit, though others may change it to fit our standards.

Contents 1 Subpages 2 Project templates 3 Notability 4 Style 4.1 Naming 4.2 Formatting 4.3 Capitalization 4.4 Dating 4.5 Disambiguating links 5 Infobox 5.1 Code 5.2 Details 5.2.1 Name 5.2.2 Type 5.2.3 Cover 5.2.4 Released 5.2.5 Recorded 5.2.6 Genre 5.2.7 Length 5.2.8 Label 5.2.9 Producer 5.3 Professional reviews 5.4 Chronology 5.5 Advanced usage 6 Article body 6.1 Track listing 6.2 Personnel 6.3 Certifications 6.4 Release history 6.5 External links 7 Categories 8 Discography 9 Work to be done 9.1 Collaboration task 9.2 Maintenance 10 Participants 11 Review sites 11.1 Non-professional reviews 11.2 Non-English reviews 12 New articles 13 See also

[edit] Subpages

• /Assessment
• /Certifications
• /Featured Albums Project

[edit] Project templates

• When you create or find a new album page, please add {{Album}} to the top of the talk page. The {{Album}} template has several optional parameters:
  • The parameter class adds the article to categories based on its assessment. Use stub, start, B, GA, A or FA. See /Assessment for details on these ratings and for importance.
  • If the page has no infobox, set needs-infobox to yes.
  • If the page needs immediate attention, answer yes, otherwise remove this line.
  • The parameter auto is for bots. Pay no attention to the bot behind the curtain.

{{Album
|class=
|importance=
|attention=
|needs-infobox=
|auto=
}}

• If the page has an incomplete infobox, note the missing details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Incomplete infobox.
• If the page has an old style infobox, add {{newinfobox|type=album}} to the top of the talk page, which adds the article to Category:Album articles needing infobox conversion.

[edit] Notability

While members of this project like to see new articles about albums, not all albums deserve articles at Wikipedia. Many consider any original studio album by a notable artist to be important enough to deserve an article, other editors follow stricter guidelines. See the following policies and policy proposals:

• Wikipedia:Notability (albums) (this is a historical, inactive guideline as of January 2007)
• Wikipedia:Notability (music)
• Wikipedia:Notability

[edit] Style

[edit] Naming

The article name should be the title of the album, disambiguated if necessary. Do not pre-emptively disambiguate! When there is no other encyclopedic use of the album title, the article should reside at the normal name, e.g. London Calling, not London Calling (album). In cases where disambiguation is needed, the term (EP) should be used for EPs, (video) for video albums and (album) for other albums, e.g. Insomniac (album) and Gas Food Lodging (EP). For multiple albums with the same title, use the artist name to distinguish the different albums, e.g. Down to Earth (Rainbow album) and Down to Earth (Ozzy Osbourne album). For artists who release multiple albums with the same name, disambiguate by year, e.g. Weezer (1994 album) and Weezer (2001 album) (unless the albums were released the same year, in which case they can be disambiguated by some commonly accepted convention).

If the album title does not use the Latin alphabet, the article name should be the transliterated form of the title using Latin characters. The title should appear in its original language in the opening line of the article. See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

[edit] Formatting

Songs and singles are placed in "quotation marks", album titles are italicized and artists are left alone, with punctuation outside quotation marks, for example,

The Beatles' songs "Taxman", "Eleanor Rigby" and "Love You To" are from their album Revolver.

Links should only be created to song articles that don't exist if you believe that the song most certainly deserves an article.

[edit] Capitalization

Shortcut: WP:ALBUMCAPS

In titles of songs or albums, and band names, the standard rule in the English language is to capitalize:

1. The first word and last word in the title.
2. All other words except for coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor), prepositions (to, over, in, for), articles (an, a, the), and the word to in infinitives. Note that short verbs (Is, Are, Be, Do) and pronouns (Me, It, His) are capitalized.

[edit] Dating

Please try to add the year in parentheses after mentioning an album for the first time in an article or paragraph (unless the year is contained within the sentence) as in: "Nirvana's next album was the breakthrough classic Nevermind (1991)". Do not use piped links to "years in music" e.g. [[1991 in music|1991]], instead add (see 1991 in music) where you feel it is appropriate.

Do not describe uncertain dates by using the season name, eg "released in winter, 1995". This can be ambiguous as northern and southern-hemisphere seasons occur at opposite times of the year. Instead, use the most accurate date possible, such as "February 1995" or "early 1995", if a more precise date cannot be verified.

Shortcut: WP:ALBUM#LEAK

The date an album was leaked onto the Internet is usually not notable, unless it resulted in some other action that is notable, such as being directly responded to by the musical artist or their management, or the leak itself receiving broad media coverage.

[edit] Disambiguating links

When linking genres and other terms in the article, be sure it points to the appropriate music-related article and not a disambiguation page. For example, rock should point to rock music and not rock; alternative should point to alternative rock and not alternative, a disambiguation page. Use piped links if necessary. Other terms to look out for are: pop music, band (musical ensemble), LP (gramophone record) and several more.

[edit] Infobox

[edit] Article body

Articles on albums should normally be about only one album, including possible reissues. These guidelines assume an article about one album is being written, and will need adjusting for articles about multiple albums, for example by shifting the heading nesting levels down one step.

Each article should begin with the album infobox (see above), followed by the lead section which should include basics such as title, artist, release date, record label, and a word or two about genre and critical reception.

Describe history, themes (musical or lyrical), a consideration of its specific influences, specific followers, where it fits in its genre and what leanings it may have toward others, reasons for the order of tracks (if any), etc. Also, synthesize the general critical reception of the album, being as detailed as possible. Be sure to note minority opinions as well, properly attributed (preferably with an external link). Also, any way the album affected the cultural consciousness of a society or culture.

There are various methods for writing album articles, but in the course of writing them two distinct styles of article (that are actually opposite ends of a spectrum) have emerged most prominently, either of which may be appropriate, depending on the album in question.

• Include a paragraph on each song, describing its critical reception and relevance to the article as a whole. This may be more appropriate for concept albums, however loose, or albums written by people known for their songwriting. See Ziggy Stardust or Aquemini for examples.
• Focus on the album as a whole, mentioning specific songs only inasmuch as one song provides an example of a topic of interest to the entire album. This may be more appropriate for albums that are largely musical, without lyrics to explain, such as much of progressive rock (e.g. Styx, Deep Purple, King Crimson), dance music (Donna Summer, Paul Oakenfold, 'N Sync) or other symphonic bands like Metallica. See Highway 61 Revisited or Violent Femmes for examples.

Add a paragraph or two on how the album fits in the development of music. What does it sound similar to? What inspired the artists? Who listened to this album, then started a band of their own and became famous ten years later?

For an example of featured articles, see 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and Enta da Stage by Black Moon.

[edit] Track listing

A track listing should generally be formatted as a numbered list.

1. "Complete song title" (John Doe, Brian Smith) – 4:23
   • First verse: Name of rapper
   • Second verse: Name of rapper
   • Samples: Name of sample source (preferably including artist, song, and album)
2. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kelly Kalamazoo) – 3:24
3. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kalamazoo, Smith, David Whitman) – 2:34

Track names should be in quotes in the track listing and in the rest of the article. A track that is a medley of multiple songs should be inside one set of quotes, like this: "Song 1/Song 2". Untitled tracks should be listed as Untitled (without quotes). If a track has an article of its own, the track name should link to that article.

Note the standard method of attributing songwriters—write (and link) the full name the first time it appears, and then just give the last name (unless the first initial is necessary to disambiguate it, as in the Gallagher brothers of Oasis). If all songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated at the top as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano." If several songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano, except where noted."

Track lengths should be included for each track. Use a spaced en dash (–) rather than a hyphen (-) as a dividing horizontal punctuation mark before the track length. (Note that they may both look the same in the edit box.) You can insert it from the special character list below the edit box (see Help:Special characters) or copy and paste it from here. You can also add it by writing – HTML entity to the edit box (like this "–") but this makes the code less readable. If you think that this is too difficult, you can still use a hyphen, and hope that someone is going to change it into a dash. This holds true both in "Track listing" and "Personnel" sections. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Dashes.

Particularly for hip hop albums, it is helpful to list which members of a group (or guests) rap on which verses as well as mentioning sampling sources. This can be done in a nested list, as in the example above. Using a table is recommended in more complicated situations (see Before These Crowded Streets for example). If a table is used, it should be formatted using class="wikitable", using column headings "#", "Title" and "Length" for the track number, the track title and the track length, respectively.

The track listing should be under a primary heading named "Track listing". If there are significantly different track listings for different editions, these can be listed under sub-headings. If the album was released primarily on CD and spans multiple discs, these should be listed separately under sub-headings named "Disc one", "Disc two" and so on. Albums originally released primarily on vinyl or cassette should similarly list the tracks of each side separately under sub-headings named "Side one" and "Side two".

[edit] Personnel

A personnel section should be included under a primary heading "Personnel" and should generally be formatted as an bulleted list of names and forms of participation, with en dashes between the two (see track listing section). The names should always be linked if an article exists. The forms of participation (for example instruments) should be written in lowercase, delimited by commas, and linked on the first occurrence only. Remember to pipe the links if needed, for example "percussion" to percussion instrument and "keyboard" to keyboard instrument.

• Johnny Poe – guitar
• Sally Morris – glockenspiel, guitar, organ, kazoo
• Mike Dee - producer

[edit] Certifications

An album's certification can be worked into the body of the article, or a table can be created if an album has achieved multiple certifications.

[edit] Release history

Albums are often released on different dates, on different labels, and on different formats in different regions. This information can be included in a table. Note that the infobox should only include the first release date and label.

Region	Date	Label	Format	Catalog
United Kingdom	November 22, 1968	Apple Records	mono double LP	PMC 7067-8
			stereo double LP	PCS 7067-8
United States	November 25, 1968	Apple, Capitol Records	double LP	SWBO 101
Worldwide reissue	July 20, 1987	Apple, Parlophone, EMI	double CD	CDP 7 46443-4 2
Japan	March 11, 1998	Toshiba-EMI	double CD	TOCP 51119-20
Japan	January 21, 2004	Toshiba-EMI	remastered LP	TOJP 60139-40

[edit] External links

Album articles may contain an external links section of links to relevant external resources about the album. Links to resources about the artist rather than the album do not need to be included here, as these should be linked from the artist's article instead. Links to individual reviews shouldn't be included here, but links to professional reviews can be included in the professional reviews section of the infobox. Appropriate links may include links to chords or lyrics for the tracks on the album. Note however that lyrics may be protected by copyright, and external resources that reprint lyrics may be violating that copyright, in which case they should not be linked.

[edit] Categories

For album articles, there are three "top-level" categories: Category:Albums by artist, Category:Albums by year and Category:Albums by genre. Each album page should be placed into two categories, Category:<Artist name> albums and Category:<year> albums, which should be sub-categories of the respective top-level category. For consistency, the artist name should be the same as the title of their article (in terms of punctuation, "&"/"and", use of "The", etc.).

For example, Reign in Blood by Slayer was released in 1986 so it has the categories Category:Slayer albums and Category:1986 albums. To add it to these categories, you would place the following code at the bottom of the article:

[[Category:Slayer albums]]
[[Category:1986 albums]]

Category:Slayer albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist, Category:American albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist nationality and Category:Thrash metal albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by genre. Category:1986 albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by year.

Previous discussions have formed the consensus that a category for an artist's albums should be created even if they have only released one album (irrespective of whether they are likely to release more in the future). Please ensure that every category you create belongs to at least one other category, otherwise, it cannot be navigated to and will be listed at Special:Uncategorizedcategories.

Be sure that the categories are sorted properly. Use the {{DEFAULTSORT:}} magic word to control the alphabetization on the category page. For example:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinks, The}}
[[Category:The Kinks albums]]
[[Category:1964 albums]]

Note that albums should be alphabetized using the first letter of the title, while artists should be alphabetized as last name, first name.

See also: Help:Category

[edit] Discography

There are no explicit guidelines on how to incorporate an album article in a discography. Of course, there are several ways how it can be done. In all cases, please keep the following hints in mind:

• sort the albums, e.g. ascending by date (since a discography is in some sense a chronology),
• if you use tables, use wikicode, to make the list easier to maintain.

A simple way to list albums could be:

• first album (year of release)
• second album (year of release)

Note that album titles should be in italics and only albums, not release years should be linked.

A different way using a table could be:

Title	Release date	Notes	Label
Firstname	1999-01-01	first studio album	Label name
Secondname	2000-01-01	another note	Label name

Most album covers are non-free images, and are not permitted in discographies (or any other gallery or list). See Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria #8 and Wikipedia:Non-free content#Acceptable_images for clarification of this policy.

[edit] Work to be done

Are you looking for Project-related work to do? Here is a list of work that may need to be done.

[edit] Participants

Everyone is welcome to join the project and contribute. Lists of members can be found in Category:WikiProject Albums members and this list.

To join the project, please add this userbox by adding {{User WikiProject Albums}} to your user page. You will automatically be added to the members category.

If you'd like to welcome new users with a message that is tailored to the project, please use the code {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/New welcome}} which will leave this message on their talk page.

[edit] Review sites

The following is a list of some websites with reviews or links to reviews that you can use in album infoboxes:

• Metacritic has no reviews but a list of most reviews from magazines (Rolling Stone, Q, Uncut, EW, etc.), websites (All Music Guide, PopMatters, Amazon.com, etc.) and newspapers (The Guardian, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, etc.), normalized on a common scale, including links to online full reviews or excerpts from paper reviews with date and page (all reviews normalized on a 0-100 scale). This is very practical for quickly finding a lot of online reviews (instead of having to manually look up all of the others below), and very practical for having a meta-link to provide about paper-only reviews. (Example of a big Metacritic page: [1] Example of an album article mixing links and meta-links: Furious Angels)
• Rolling Stone (5-star scale)
• PopMatters (no formal rating for reviews published before 2005; 10-point scale thereafter)
• All Music Guide (5-star scale - do not indicate the "Album Pick" designation)
• ARTISTdirect (5-star scale, plus mirror reviews from All Music Guide. If the review is a mirror, use the original instead.)
• Crawdaddy! (no formal scale)
• Blender Magazine (5-star scale)
• Entertainment Weekly (grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• NME (10-point scale, at bottom of review)
• Pitchfork Media (10-point scale, precision to a tenth of a point)
• Alternative Press (5-point scale)
• Slant Magazine (5-star scale)
• Stylus Magazine (usually grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• Sputnikmusic (staff reviews only, 5-point scale)
• Buy.com has no reviews, but does have a "professional reviews" link on the left side of album pages, containing brief excerpts from reviews from magazines like Mojo and NME, which do not have searchable online databases, and also includes the date and page of the review.
• Robert Christgau (grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• Piero Scaruffi (10-point scale, not all artists have ratings)
• Canoe.ca (portal for Sun Media newspapers in Canada)
• iq451.com has no reviews but has clickable links to many reviews, some of which are professional
• The 9513--Country Music (5-star scale. Largest Country-only e-Mag).
• Yahoo! Music (no formal scale, reviews written by members of the music journalism community)

[edit] Non-professional reviews

As a matter of policy, reviews from these review sources are not considered professional, and should not be included in album infoboxes:

• Amazon.com
• Encyclopaedia Metallum
• Epinions
• Prog Archives
• Rate Your Music
• Sputnikmusic's non-staff reviews
• Ultimate Guitar Archive

Reviews and ratings which only summarize other reviews and ratings should not be included either:

• Metacritic
• Artistdirect's reviews from All Music Guide

[edit] Non-English reviews

As the number of reviews should be limited, and as languages other than English are not understood by a large number of readers, reviews in languages other than English should generally not be included unless the language is especially relevant to the album in question.

[edit] New articles

[edit] See also

• Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable albums
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs
• Wikipedia:Record charts

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