Linktree URLs, why not?

a minor issue I’ve had for quite some time, which I was just reminded of… is there any particular reason we don’t allow links to an artist’s Linktr.ee (and other similar services)? whenever I try to add one I get the Please don’t enter bundled/shortened URLs, enter the destination URL(s) instead. warning…

some examples from my edit history include Will Patterson, Stay Lost, SQUIDIOT, and there’s certainly many others. these pages (in theory) are maintained by the artist, and might be updated with new links at any time, so could be more up-to-date than the artist’s URL relationships

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This was brought up on IRC a while back, and I agree with you that we should allow them.

At first glance it seems like they’re just collections of links we could enter separately, so I understand why it was disallowed.

But, as you say, over time I’ve found that a lot of artists use them as a type of homepage, updated with more current links over time, and links that individually wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate to add to the artist on their own.

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The main reason is, as mentioned, that it’s a collection of links we don’t support (usually for a reason) and links we do support (and as such should be added separately under the appropriate relationships). In fact, we actively maintain and expand our list of blocked aggregator services every time we’re notified of one.

I understand that in some cases, some artists use aggregators as an alternative to a website by just throwing all sorts of stuff into them. AFAICT that’s still not the majority use, and I would still be very wary of allowing them because it will still in most cases cause links that should be added and available to users to be hidden behind the aggregator link, where we have no idea what we’ll find.

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in my experience, most if not all the Linktree pages I’ve come across are very similar to the 3 I picked at random above. mostly social links, often streaming links, and sometimes links to their most recent album. I actually don’t remember having seen a Linktree used for other purposes…

that is entirely fair, and I could definitely see that happening too… that could possibly be counteracted by a warning if an aggregator is the only link on an artist, or not allowing adding an aggregator link without at least two other links on the artist in question? I dunno if these would work, but they might help at worst…

a benefit to having Linktree and others in the database, it’s possible that say, a bot could pop in, see there’s missing social links or something, and possibly add them, or at least tag the artist with something like “missing links” or something, and a human editor could go through the tag and add them manually (if we don’t want a bit adding social links, that is)

either way, I’ll try and start adding these links to my edit notes, that way they’re documented somewhere

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The cases I come across often with ‘the younger generation’ (I am now officially old) of artists is usually links to their newest releases, newest news/blogs, upcoming events, and then their socials in the small links at the bottom. Quite a bit of stuff I wouldn’t add individually, and exactly what I’d expect on a ‘official website’ (remember those!?).

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When I come across them I have been adding them in my notes when adding the links they contain along with any other sources for the links I have. I get scared if MB doesn’t know what a link should be on it’s own so I don’t add them :laughing:

If anything some aspiring script nerd could devise a way of importing all the URL’s from a Linktree (or similar) profile ready for pasting into MBz :slight_smile:

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