BBC Landing Page

From MusicBrainz Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search

Hi, and welcome to MusicBrainz! This page is intended to give you a few starting points to edit MusicBrainz, whether you're an artist or a user of the BBC Music site. Please read it (and any other guides relevant to what you want to do) before starting to edit. If after reading you're still stuck, then contact us so we can help you and hopefully make the guides more useful for other users.

Introduction

What is MusicBrainz?

MusicBrainz is a community-maintained open source encyclopedia of music information. Data in MusicBrainz can be edited by anyone, so artists and fans can fix and extend the information. Note that unlike Wikipedia, changes to the data don't usually apply automatically, but have to be voted on.

How does the BBC use MusicBrainz's data?

The BBC uses the MusicBrainz database as the backbone of their artist pages eg.Kraftwerk artist page. An artist must exist in the MusicBrainz database in order to have a BBC artist page, and this page will be systematically linked to from across bbc.co.uk wherever editorially relevant (eg. from tracklists, playlists, charts, event pages etc). Related BBC content is aggregated on each artist page, including videos, audio clips, album reviews and play count information.

Guides

Creating a MusicBrainz account

First, you need to create a MusicBrainz user account. Note that MusicBrainz doesn't have any kind of special artist or corporate accounts, but if you represent a company it is recommended that you show it in your username eg. "sony_bob" or "bbc_john".

Creating a MusicBrainz artist page

Creating a new artist is simple, just follow the How to Add an Artist guide. Don't try to turn an existing, different artist into your own entry, just add a new artist for you and work with that. If the BBC have attributed radio plays to the wrong artist, contact them once you have created the right one and let them know of the problem.

Once the artist page has been created on MusicBrainz it may take several hours to show up on the BBC Music website and in search results.

Adding links to the artist

The BBC takes most of their links for an artist from MusicBrainz. For adding a new link, follow the guide for adding URLs.

Note that the Last.fm links are automatically added by the BBC, and they can't be added or modified through MusicBrainz.

Adding a biography

The BBC displays biography extracts from the Wikipedia page related to the artist in MusicBrainz. You can add the Wikipedia page like any other URL.

Adding a photo

The BBC does not use MusicBrainz data to display the artist photo on each BBC artist page, but a combination of Getty Images, BBC copyright photos and publicity shots. Adding an image link to MusicBrainz won't get it shown on the BBC page.

If you'd like to add a photo for an artist who has been played by the BBC, please contact them directly for details.

Adding releases

For adding releases (albums, singles, etc.) to your artist, follow the How to Add a Release guide.