User:JohnFromPinckney/MusicSandbox2
If you want to improve, develop, and add to music-related articles on Wikipedia, one great place to start is the WikiProject page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Music. Another way to start is to simply choose the article of your choice about a song, your favorite band, an album, etc., and see what's missing from the article, what corrections might be necessary, and then boldly making those changes. Be aware, though, that in addition to basic, general-WP items like citations, layout, MoS, etc., music articles have some traditions, customs, and quirks specific to the field. Therefore, you might do well to find out some of the basics before jumping in over your head (and possibly irritating other editors needlessly). This page offers some pointers to other pages where you might learn more; it also offers a few pointers of its own.
Notability
[edit]Notability is a content guideline for Wikipedia in general. There are also several topic-specific varieties:
- Notability of music in general: Wikipedia:Notability (music)
- Notability of albums and songs: WP:NSONGS
- Notability of artists: WP:BAND
- Notability of composers: WP:COMPOSER
You may not have been intending to create an article about Jay and the J-Notes, a band from 1958 that recorded only one demo in their six months before dissolving, but it regularly happens that a new song from a popular artist will be created before the song is released as a single or makes it to the charts? Notable or not? The guidelines will help, especially if you want to argue for or against at the AfD discussion which will invariably ensue.
Singles
[edit]What's a single? Wikipedia has an article about it, but it's not comprehensive, and badly needs references. Quite (too) simply, a single is supposed to be an individual song which is officially released by the artist's record company. That's the historic version, anyway, but the time of 45 rpm vinyl discs is long gone; A-sides and B-sides, promotional singles, digital downloads, and the vagaries of music business politics and new technologies leave this an open question, still debated daily on Wikipedia Discussion pages. This is especially annoying, since WP:NSONGS makes much of whether a song is a single or not. My personal attempt to sort through this is at Singles.
Songs and albums
[edit]All singles (whatever they are) are songs, but not all songs are singles. Some Wikipedia editors have developed a project for songs, which you can find at WP:SONGS. Wikipedians have also created an albums WikiProject, at WP:ALBUMS.
Release dates
[edit]Tangled up with the arguments about what constitutes a single is the ongoing discussion of release dates. See Release dates(?).
Charts and archives
[edit]One factor used in the determination of notability is a recording's inclusion on one or more record charts, accepted as measures of relative popularity. The charts may be general or constrained to a specific genre. A chart may cover an entire country, or only some portions of it (e.g., Belgium or Scotland). The European charts extend across multiple national boundaries. The United States is one country where many notable chaarts are recognized as reliable.
Chart appearances are routinely reported in Wikipedia articles. It is usual to refer to the recording's peak, that is, the highest level it reached on a given chart. While it's safe to say that a song from the 1970s peaked at number 8, a song that is currently moving up the charts can hardly be said to have peaked; as we are (supposed to be) a neutral encyclopedia, it is inappropriate for us to authoritatively tell the reader that such-and-such song peaked at number 9, when it may well be the no. 1 the next week, and the "peak" will be shown to be nothing of the kind.
Charts are published periodically (typically weekly) by chart publishers. They may be completely accessible to the general public, or to only a group of paying subscribers (some charts are available in part to everybody, while only subscribers get to see everything).
Separate from charts are archives. These may be published by the chart producers themselves, or by some organization with a license from the chart publisher. Some archives may have no license whatever, and as such, are not desirable for use here on Wikipedia (even if their completeness or ease of use makes them attractive).
Single-work articles
[edit]Articles about a song or album
Discographies and artist articles
[edit]What is says, dope
Style guidlines
[edit]Wikipedia:Manual of Style (record charts) is labelled "style", but also contains GOODCHARTS (including tips about where to find chart and archive data), BADCHARTS, and USCHARTS.
MOS:DISCOG has, um, ...
Templates
[edit]list 'em, point to 'em, splain about 'em (a little)
Sales/shipments
[edit]What they are (they aren't always the other thing), where to get them, when to report them
Certifications
[edit]Who awards them, what they (are supposed to) represent. Thresholds by country
Billboard
[edit]These bastards deserve their own section here, not just because they effectively "own" the music-tracking industry in the U.S., but also because their publications are so (what's the polite way to say it?) special. Their site's very slow, requires JS and images, isn't always up, contains lists which may disagree with each other, is not always updated in a timely manner, and includes articles which may disappear without warning after a few weeks. Older charts are routinely trimmed so that, for example, only the top 15 of a 100-song chart is available online. Furthermore, they work to issue dates corresponding to a paper version, with no obvious, intuitive, or even acknowledged connection to the calendar date. The names of their charts are shown differently on the (free) billboard.com site in relation to the (pay) billboard.biz site. Their consideration of users such as us hapless Wikipedians is in inverse proportion to their market share in U.S. music charting.
Bubbling Under charts
[edit]Two of Billboard's song charts are use the term "Bubbling Under" to indicate that the songs are ranked close to the associated main chart and may be moving up into the top 100 on that chart soon. In order to keep that significance, songs are eligible for listing on these charts only if they have not already been on the main chart. (We may presume that otherwise, about half of the songs on the Bubbling Under chart are indeed trending upwards, while the other half are moving down.) The current versions of the Bubbling Under charts are 25 songs each.
What are "the associated main charts"? Well, that's easy, as the name of the charts give it away: Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles is associated with the Billboard Hot 100; the Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Singles with Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
The listing of positions on the Bubbling Under charts is open to some debate on Wikipedia, as only weak consensus has developed for whether the numbering should be 1 to 25, as on the current charts, or added to the main 100, giving 101 to 125, as was orignally used by Billboard. Indeed, even the listing at all is unwanted by some editors, because of the confusion of listing two charts together (a 107 in a column labeled "Hot 100" looks like a mistake), as well as the higher degree of difficulty in verifying Bubbling Under peaks (as Billboard doesn't display them online, and they aren't otherwise archived electronically.
| Time span | Hot 100 Singles | Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BB used/uses | Whitburn used/uses | BB used/uses | Whitburn used/uses | |
| June 1, 1959 – August 24, 1985 | 101+ | ? | ? | ? |
| August 25, 1985 – December 4, 1992 | — | — | ? | ? |
| December 5, 1992 – present | 1–25 | 101+ | ? | ? |
Sources (actually posts from other Wikipedians, portions copied here):
- FYI—From 1960 to 1985 the Bubbling Under chart started at #101, since 1992 it has been numbered 1–25. Piriczki (talk) 15:23, 20 September 2010 (UTC)
- Joel Whitburn's Hot Country Songs 1994–2008 also includes all country music Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart positions. Positions below #100 are listed as 101, 102, etc. Eric444 (talk) 04:32, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
- Questions
- Our Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles article gives begin and end dates for the Hot 100 version of B.U. However we don't have a Bubbling Under Hot R&B/Hip-Hop article, and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs article talks about Bubbling Under but doesn't provide dates. When did the R&B version of B.U. start? And did it ever have a break, as the Hot 100 version did? Extra credit: what ref citation points to these dates? (If we had this infomation, we could put it into Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs or somewhere and I wouldn't have to ask next time.)
- Does Whitburn ever list or mention R&B Bubbling Under songs? Or just the Hot 100 B.U. songs?
- Do all/have all of Whitburn's listings for both charts, for all time ever, use the 101+ format? Or what (and when)?
Miscellaneous Ponderings:
What is a single (nobody knows, so how should I)?
NSONGS seems to count on it partially
Sources for single, release date, sales What to do about Billboard? Launch a salvo at them?
Slow, JS- and graphic-heavy site. Lists don't always match. Dates don't match reality. Over 10 not always available (now charting, too old). Volatile .story pages.
Genres: useful descriptor or just something to war about? 10 charts, 10 critical ratings. Which ones, and how do we know? Discussions every time? BRD?
Biggest markets, home market, native language markets, regional markets, geo-balanced markets?
Highest ratings? Reliable/accessible archives? Country codes: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2? -3? SWI? SUI? CH? CHE? IRE? IRL? DEU? GER?
Which charts to use for discographies
[edit]Working on the inaccurate assumption that total population indicates market size for music recordings, here's a list of countries with typically appear which music chart listings in WP articles.
| Pop. rank | Country | Pop. (millions) |
|---|---|---|
| 022 | GB | 62.0 |
| 053 | AUS | 22.5 |
| 093 | AUT | 8.4 |
| 076 | BEL | 10.8 |
| 005 | BRA | 193.6 |
| 097 | BGR | 7.6 |
| 036 | CAN | 34.3 |
| 078 | CZE | 10.5 |
| 110 | DNK | 5.5 |
| 112 | FIN | 5.4 |
| 021 | FRA | 65.4 |
| 015 | DEU | 81.8 |
| 074 | GRC | 11.3 |
| 085 | HUN | 10.0 |
| 120 | IRL | 4.5 |
| 023 | ITA | 60.4 |
| 010 | JPN | 127.4 |
| 011 | MEX | 108.4 |
| 061 | NLD | 16.6 |
| 116 | NOR | 4.9 |
| 123 | NZL | 4.4 |
| 034 | POL | 38.2 |
| 077 | POR | 10.6 |
| 009 | RUS | 141.9 |
| 111 | SVK | 5.4 |
| 027 | ESP | 46.1 |
| 088 | SWE | 9.4 |
| 094 | CHE | 7.8 |
| 003 | US | 310.4 |
| BE-VLG | 6.2 | |
| BE-WAL | 3.4 |
Source population and rank: List of countries by population
Source country codes: ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, ISO 3166-1 alpha-2, ISO 3166-2:BE