Template:AMG ref/doc

Usage

An easy and optional method to make inline citation references to AllMusic for albums. Always substitute this template. All fields are required and are only made up of plain text (i.e. there is no styling such as italics for album titles:

1. the AllMusic album id, for instance "mw0000647618"
2. the name of the album, for instance "New Adventures in Hi-Fi"
3. the name of the recording artist, for instance "R.E.M."
4. the personal name of the reviewer of the album, for instance "Stephen Thomas"
5. the surname of the reviewer of the album, for instance "Erlewine"

To use this example elaborated above, insert:

{{subst:AMG ref|mw0000647618|New Adventures in Hi-Fi|R.E.M.|Stephen Thomas|Erlewine}}>

to get the following reference:

<ref name="amg">{{Cite web |url=https://allmusic.com/album/mwmw0000647618 |title=New Adventures in Hi-Fi – R.E.M. |language=en-US |website=[[AllMusic]] |publisher=[[RhythmOne]] |accessdate=2023-06-14 |first=Stephen Thomas |last=Erlewine |date=n.d.}}</ref>

Note that for several years, AllMusic's web pages were titled "[Artist] – [Album Title]", but this switched in late February 2024.

Known issues and to-do

• You cannot actually substitute inside of reference tags. This is a MediaWiki-wide issue and cannot be resolved by this template or on this project. The workaround is a simple hack where the trailing right angle bracket at the very end must be manually inserted. Cumbersome, but this still results in less typing for the user and ensures conformity and best practices for the template parameters (for instance, {{Cite-web}} recommends using "date=n.d." for undated web pages, but only a very small fraction of AllMusic references actually use this.
• You cannot include further optional parameters, such as author-link. In the example above, the author has a biography on Wikipedia, so it is best to link to Stephen Thomas Erlewine. This could be accomplished with if-then statements in the future. Alternately, users can just substitute the existing template and then manually edit fields such as this one.
• The access-date defaults to ISO dates. This will likely be resolved on individual pages that have tags such as {{use dmy dates}} and {{use mdy dates}}. If not, a bot can fix these.
• In the future, this should be able to draw AllMusic album ids from Wikidata.

TemplateData

Template parameters

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
AllMusic ID	1	The AllMusic album id Example mw0000647618	String	required
Album name	2	The name of the album Example New Adventures in Hi-Fi	String	required
Recording artist	3	The name of the recording artist Example R.E.M.	String	required
Reviewer first name	4	The personal name of the reviewer of the album Example Stephen Thomas	String	required
Reviewer last name	5	The surname of the reviewer of the album Example Erlewine	String	required

See also

• {{ADM ref}}
• {{AllMusic}}
• {{AllMovie title}}
• {{AllMovie name}}
• {{MC ref}}