Hello!
Do you reckon there are any artists that edit their own pages on MusicBrainz? If so, how common do you reckon that is? Would that be something that would be of interest for MusicBrainz?
I see new releases come about every week. They first pop up on Spotify, and YouTube, and presumably on many other platforms. Usually on Fridays, 'tis the common release day (iirc that gives the song a full week counting towards charts). Yet on ListenBrainz, my ‘Fresh Releases’ feels empty compared to Spotify. Now, it could be due to recommendations. But I reckon the need for information to be added manually by contributors is the real culprit behind it.
I’ve come essentially to add songs off my Release Radar, on Spotify, over to MusicBrainz, such that it can populate not only mine but other people’s Fresh Releases. Essentially taking Spotify’s new releases on a Friday, so that ListenBrainz recommends them on a Saturday. This takes a bit of work. Yet all other platforms get the release pretty much all at the same time. I reckon there could be some sort of way that MusicBrainz could be among those platforms that get all that information on Fridays. Do you reckon that could be done, somehow? Would that be of interest?
Thank you for your time!
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It’s reasonably common. I see it often with small British artists because some BBC programs for up and coming artists ask them to add themselves to MB since the BBC uses our data. They mostly all seem to hate it, since it’s another thing they have to do (which they already have a million of) in a site designed for hardcore users with a lot of confusing things to figure out.
Yes, the problem is that that is all automated data which in many cases is shit. The community generally has been against automatic imports in the past, and the only way this could potentially work is doing something similar to what BookBrainz is (IIUC) planning for their importers, where they allow some automatic imports but they’re basically quarantined / marked as second class data until a human looks at it, fixes it up and says it’s good.
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I wonder if this is an opportunity for the community to establish an “Adopt an Artist” program, whereby an artist can contact the community to have someone volunteer as a “buddy” to help them get all set up and have their information entered. Back in my Engineering Manager days, I implemented a similar “buddy” program where we would match up each new employee with an experienced employee so that the new employee had someone they knew they could go to with questions or to help them assimilate into the department. Of course, the “buddies” were all volunteers – no one was forced to be a “buddy” and not everyone was suitable. The program was generally well received by both the new employees and the volunteer “buddies”.
Not only would something like this benefit the artist, but would possibly improve the quality of information entered. It would also help establish a working relationship between the artists and MusicBrainz, and help promote MusicBrainz as being “artist friendly”. A side benefit is that it might develop personal friendships between artists and MusicBrainz community volunteers. I’ve done this with a couple of small independent artists, and indeed resulted in friendships (even though we live 1000’s of km apart or on different continents), and I’m sure I’m not the only one that has done this.
I would be willing to help out as a volunteer “buddy” and/or help coordinate setting up the program to match artists with “buddy” volunteers if there’s any interest from the community.
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chaban has a related collection Artists with MB profile
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That is something that would be great, and I’d love to help too, but it needs artists interested in the first place. Because right now having your data in MB doesn’t do much for you other to please the 2-3 nerds following you.
You can automatically have a last fm page I guess? But apart from that and labels that use MB datas as a repository like the BBC, it’s kinda moot
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I wouldn’t say that is true. Google uses MB data for their knowledge cards. Adding an artist to MusicBrainz can make Google show cards for artists who previously lacked them. So it can help significantly for smaller artists especially. A friend of mine didn’t have a knowledge card for years, but awhile after I added them to MusicBrainz they finally got one.
It may not be really visible to people, but a lot of services use MusicBrainz data.
https://metabrainz.org/supporters
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With the one that I know of, the editing history suggests that there was some misunderstanding between the manager and other editors.
very much looking forward to this feature~ is there a ticket for it yet? I couldn’t find one with a quick search (either the BookBrainz feature in progress or the possible MusicBrainz feature, maybe @kellnerd knows about the former?)
back to the topic at hand, I do see quite a few artists editing their own pages. I often work with smaller online artists, so that might have an effect on my experience
the Fresh Releases issue has been on my mind for a long time too, especially since I don’t have a true recommendation/new music feed after ditching Spotify a few years back, and ListenBrainz hasn’t quite filled that void yet (that said, following artists on Bandcamp has helped)… another reason I’m looking forward to some sort of automatic import for MusicBrainz
I’d prolly like to volunteer for this, lemme know if we go through with this~
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