Marcel over at neunetz.com – who also is kind enough to give me the opportunity to write pathetic articles on OpenID on his blog – has written an excellent article on how to discover new music on the web this week. If you can read German you should check it out. Unfortunately he has forgotten to mention one of the best sites on the whole World Wide Web: Discogs.com.
Discogs is a user-build database of music information. It was launched in 2000 by Kevin Lewandowski to catalogue his record collection. It then evolved into a database focusing on electronic music but is including almost every other genre by now; classical music is probably the only one missing one. The goal was (and is) quite simple but highly ambitious: cataloguing all releases and cross-referencing artists, releases, and labels.
Submissions
In order to ensure consistency, submissions by users will be voted on by a moderation team. The submission process is rather difficult although a very detailed submission form is provided. Especially new users have to wait some weeks or even months until their submissions are approved; moderators seem to be pendantic sometimes but the database is proof that consistency and rules are necessary. It’s probably best to have a look at other submissions first and to read the forums for a while to get an idea how it is working; the submission guidelines are a must read. Although I joined Discogs in 2002 and have submitted 572 releases by now I still make mistakes; usually because the submission guidelines change from time to time.
Cross-reference
The cross-reference of artists, labels, and releases is the real beauty of Discogs. The band Jawbox being an example:
As you can see there are all (former) band members listed, the band’s releases including release dates and labels. Except for the release dates all information are links as well. So if you click on Kim Coletta you can see on which recordings she appeared and also some variations of her name used on various recordings.
So you can browse from one artist to another, see their recordings, see which artists have also released on your favourite label, and much more. In the end you have complete artist and label discographies. Discogs has become an invaluable source of information over the last couple of years. Currently there are more than 730,000 releases by 600,000 artists on 65,000 labels listed.
If you need any information on artists or labels go to Discogs. The information is most probably there.
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Tags: Artist, complete artist, Jawbox, Kevin Lewandowski
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jeez, shame on me :/
it’s like with amg: I forgot it because it’s part of my life for ages now.“is including almost every other genre by now” are they? I remember ugly discussions on what is worth being listed there and what not.
It was well weird.
I’d still only count on them on electronic music though. nothing beats the allmusicguide on everything else musicrelated. -
Yes, it’s very comprehensive. Genres include Pop, Rock (Punk, Metal,…), Blues, Jazz, Funk/Soul, Latin, Hip Hop, Reggae, Electronic Music, and even Non-Music (e.g. spoken word recordings of Henry Rollins). It’s my first stop. I only go to AMG if I need more information like an artist biography.
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Well, I started to appreciate Discogs a few months ago, as I found the Discogs Plugin for Foobar 2000 to tag my vinyl collection. I like discogs, but it’s still not flexible enough, e.g. track information is sometimes wrong – especially on records, that only a few people own.
It’s great, but I still prefer RDB for D&B Records, as it is focused on one genre only.
But nice review, Carsten!
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You can update submissions, Thomas.
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Jep… signed up yesterday and I’ll try to do my best!
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Pingback from musikdieb.de » Links on May 3, 2007 at 16:57
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