User:Giggy/Satisfying music notability guidelines

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

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Inevitable disclaimer

Make sure you’ve actually read the music notability guideline before reading through this!
Remember, a lot of this is just my suggestions, based on my editing experience - you’re welcome to disagree and encouraged to edit/discuss this ruthlessly.
Content on this page may sometimes contradict WP:MUSIC, either because I’m lazy, or…yeah, probably just because I’m lazy. In such cases, the guideline is always right - never cite this page over it.
Finally, it’s highly recommended that exceptions be taken with a grain of salt and a bit of research - any assistance through linking to controversial AfDs etc. would help!

The criteria, and how to satisfy them

1. Coverage from reliable sources

Point one of the notability guideline asks for coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. The words in bold are the key there!

It says multiple, not “1”, which means exactly that - we need at least two newspapers/journals/books/websites/whatevers to cover it, not just one!^[1]
The sources must be independent. Independent (conveniently linked to Wiktionary, so don’t say you don’t know what it means) means the source was not published by the band who produce the music.^[2]
The sources must be reliable - go read RS for more information about what this means. You are not a reliable source, mmk? Neither are some newspapers that get REALLY bad reps, although in most cases the word on the street isn’t going to influence how reliable a source is considered.^[3]

Tips on satisfying this criterion

Google News is a great place to start - as it’s an archive of a great deal of the news stories published this century (and many more, I’m not sure on the specifics but you get the gist), there’s a good chance the article you were looking for can be found there, if it was published online.^[4]
Autobiographies are another great way to get quality sources, so it’s good to check out your local library if you get the chance. If they were published by a notable book publisher, they are reliable, and if they contain a co-author (not JUST the subject of the book) they are fully independent.^[5]
If your favourite band’s website has a fanclub or email list you can subscribe to, do so! Even if the newsletter isn’t always independent/reliable (see the exception with Dream Days at the Hotel Existence mentioned above, courtesy of the Powderfinger fanclub newsletter), you’ll still get up-to-date news on what the band’s doing, which is great for focusing your research around a particular date.^[6]
Google Alerts is a service provided by Google which sends you an email every time there’s a new web/news/groups/images (whatever you choose) result for a specific word or phrase.^[7] With (very) popular bands, this can result in inbox clogging, so it’s good to set up a filter (to a new folder in hotmail, or to a label in gmail) to keep these messages under control. Let the alert run for a while, and suddenly you have a library of relevant sources available in your inbox!

Useful sites

Australian Music Online; their article says it all, really
Australian Music Central has fansites set up for various Australian bands (I mainly use it for Powderfinger central, which includes an archive of articles about the band for about 7 years), as well as other useful content. Independent, mostly reliable.^[8]
EveryHit is a searchable database for UK chart positions for any band you could possibly imagine. You can also search for singles, album or dates.

Band/Artist has gone on an international tour

International is the keyword here...define it how you will, the essence is that they must have set foot in multiple countries. I like to use 2 “major countries” as a benchmark,^[9] but you can argue this as long as they flew overseas and did a show there, AND linked that show to a show they did in their home country/another country.

Example

Across the Great Divide Tour is an international tour - there were shows in both Australia and New Zealand. However, the New Zealand shows weren’t announced as part of the tour from the start; initially the tour was advertised as Australian shows only, whilst in New Zealand the advertising was simply “Powderfinger and Silverchair together in concert”. If it had remained like that, it would NOT have been an international tour, as the shows in NZ weren’t part of the tour itself, but were “just shows”.^[10]

Useful sites and tips on finding information

Be sure to check out travel agencies and organisations like TicketMaster - if they advertise the tour, you know it’s notable enough locally, and you now just need to see if it’s international. For this, many businesses that organise international touring “experiences” are useful - look for the tour on their website, there will usually be links to where you can find more (citable) information about the tour itself.^[11]

Releasing two notable albums through a notable record label

Many album articles at the moment are notable because the artist who produces them is notable, so this is a bit of an infinite loop. The easiest to way to get out of it is to get two independent sources for the album or for the record label, thus asserting notability for THEM.^[12]

Links and tips on satisfying this criterion

It’s usually easier to focus on the album. Look through all the music review websites around, try and find stuff about the album. A review that contains contextual information^[13] is good - get two^[14] and you’ve got a notable album.

Australian music online contains details of virtually every Australian music release - it certainly covers ALL of the notable ones.^[15] Sometimes all that AMO has is a track listing and release date,^[16] but sometimes they also include information about the release which can constitute an independent and reliable source. Just be careful - occasionally the blurbs they use are just copy-pasted from the record label’s website, so they aren’t independent.
Herald Sun Hit publishes stacks of album reviews - if it was released in Australia and was a bit popular, chances are it will receive some sort of mention here.

Won a major award

ARIA Awards in Australia, Grammy Awards in the USA, BRIT Awards in the UK are all major awards.^[17] There are many more awards that have articles, and most of them would scrape the band/artist through this criteria, but it’s best to start from the biggest awards and work your way down.

Tips and links for this criterion

Be sure you’ve looked through the awards archives for the respective award. Some of them (like the ARIA Awards) have websites designed by Satin, making it near on impossible to find your band mentioned without just loading every year’s awards and hitting Ctrl F. Some awards sites (and some mirror sites or sites devoted to awards sites) are designed so you can search for your artist and find everything they’ve won - these sites deserve a barnstar. If you can find them, use them.

Appeared on a chart

Generally, the nation’s official music chart is good enough for the criteria, so just work with that. Depending on how the chart functions, you may be able to argue that getting #458 on the Nowheresville National Chart is good enough, but this rarely works - top 40 or top 100 is most likely to get you through, depending on the country and chart design.

Tips and links

Many songs and albums that don’t achieve much success in the US (ie. Don't achieve the Billboard Top 40) still make it on to the ARIA Charts. That said, ARIA’s website is designed to be as difficult to use as possible, so use Australian Charts instead. It has a nifty search engine that shows how many entries they’ve had on the chart, where it peaked, etc.

Contains a notable musician OR Is a member of a notable band

This is by far the most fun criterion to play around with :)^[18] Basically, to achieve notability for a band, one of the band members must have been notable in another band, or in an individual career. To achieve notability for an artist, they must be part of a band which is notable for containing an otherwise notable band member. Quite a tongue twister, so here’s an example.

Example - The Powderfinger notability tree

I’ve trimmed this to only include one relevant example

Powderfinger contains Bernard Fanning, Darren Middleton, Ian Haug, John Collins, and Jon Coghill. Steven Bishop is a former member. The band is notable for multiple albums and awards.
- Ian Haug is notable as a Powderfinger member.
- John Collins is notable as a Powderfinger member.
- Steven Bishop is notable as a former/founding Powderfinger member.
  - The Predators contains Ian Haug, John Collins, Steven Bishop, and Ross McLennan. The band has only released an EP, and has not achieved notability standards itself. However, it’s notable because of Haug, Collins, and Bishop being past/present Powderfinger members AND therefore being notable members of it.
    - Ross McLennan is notable as a member of The Predators, which in turn is notable for having Powderfinger members in it.
  - Far Out Corporation is notable for containing Ross McLennan, and Grant McLennan how is a notable individual musician.

Get the idea? Ross McLennan has no (direct) relation to Powderfinger - he’s never performed for them or worked for them, yet he’s notable through the notability they pass down into his band.^[19]

Tips on achieving this criterion

Make sure all your band articles and artist articles are well linked, and contain all the relevant information about which bands this person has played in. It makes it so much easier to check if the article you want to create is notable! Remember, if a band is notable, so are its members, and if a person has achieved notability through an individual career, all his/her bands^[20] are notable.

Footnotes

^ There are no exceptions to this - if only one source can be found that covers this band (one independent reliable source, that is, as two non-independent non reliable sources won’t cut it), it fails this criterion.
^ There is no clear consensus on this exception, but some editors (me included) consider it OK to cite newsletters published by the band, in which album review comments are scores are published, provided the initial publisher of the review is cited in the newsletter. It’s obviously better to just cite the original review, but if you can’t find it, you could get away with this alternative. An example of this use is in Dream Days at the Hotel Existence (currently a good article).
^ No (known) exceptions - suggestions and links to past discussions welcome.
^ In music articles, online references are about as good as book/print refs, as most magazines/newspapers that deal with music publish online anyway.
^ A great example of this is Blood Sugar Sex Magik - half of the references come from a book by a member of RHCP, but because it the book wasn’t published by “AnthonyTheBiasPublisherLtd.”, it’s a reliable source! It’s also considered independent as he wasn’t the only author (co-author = (some) neutrality).
^ If this fanclub also publishes the newsletters online, you could get a WikiProject task force for your band to archive all these newsletters. Example: Wikipedia:WikiProject Powderfinger/Fanclub.
^ For example, I’ve subscribed to a google alert for “Powderfinger” under “News”, so whenever a new result is available when searching for Powderfinger at Google News, I get an email.
^ AFAIK it’s no longer updated. :(
^ That’s massively subjective, so I won’t define major country =p
^ I’m sure this happened with a few tours, so please add to this section!
^ While you’re there, buy tickets! You can get some awesome photos that way, which you should then upload to Commons xD
^ There are other notability criterion for albums, but chances are it’ll get 2 newspaper articles about it if it wins an ARIA award!
^ ie. Not just “song 1 sucks, song 2 rocks, song 3 is OK, album is grooveh”, but actually talks about production and background
^ Make sure both are independent and RS!
^ yes, by notable I mean WP:MUSIC
^ which are still required for the article, so now you have a source for that
^ If you’re reading this and know of some others that are on equal par with those, feel free to add to the list!
^ If you’re bored and feel like creating articles, check if a band has articles for its member. Then see if all those members have articles for all their bands. Then see if all those bands have articles for all those members, and so on =P
^ Still don’t get it? Here we go, step by step. 1) Powderfinger is notable. 2) Therefore, Ian Haug (part of Powderfinger) is notable. 3) Therefore, The Predators are notable. 4) Therefore, Ross McLennan (part of The Predators) is notable.
^ Including side-projects, if official - erm...if the guy has said he’s part of the band and has done some work with them

[1] There are no exceptions to this - if only one source can be found that covers this band (one independent reliable source, that is, as two non-independent non reliable sources won’t cut it), it fails this criterion.

[2] There is no clear consensus on this exception, but some editors (me included) consider it OK to cite newsletters published by the band, in which album review comments are scores are published, provided the initial publisher of the review is cited in the newsletter. It’s obviously better to just cite the original review, but if you can’t find it, you could get away with this alternative. An example of this use is in Dream Days at the Hotel Existence (currently a good article).

[3] No (known) exceptions - suggestions and links to past discussions welcome.

[4] In music articles, online references are about as good as book/print refs, as most magazines/newspapers that deal with music publish online anyway.

[5] A great example of this is Blood Sugar Sex Magik - half of the references come from a book by a member of RHCP, but because it the book wasn’t published by “AnthonyTheBiasPublisherLtd.”, it’s a reliable source! It’s also considered independent as he wasn’t the only author (co-author = (some) neutrality).

[6] If this fanclub also publishes the newsletters online, you could get a WikiProject task force for your band to archive all these newsletters. Example: Wikipedia:WikiProject Powderfinger/Fanclub.

[7] For example, I’ve subscribed to a google alert for “Powderfinger” under “News”, so whenever a new result is available when searching for Powderfinger at Google News, I get an email.

[8] AFAIK it’s no longer updated. :(

[9] That’s massively subjective, so I won’t define major country =p

[10] I’m sure this happened with a few tours, so please add to this section!

[11] While you’re there, buy tickets! You can get some awesome photos that way, which you should then upload to Commons xD

[12] There are other notability criterion for albums, but chances are it’ll get 2 newspaper articles about it if it wins an ARIA award!

[13] . Not just “song 1 sucks, song 2 rocks, song 3 is OK, album is grooveh”, but actually talks about production and background

[14] Make sure both are independent and RS!

[15] yes, by notable I mean WP:MUSIC

[16] which are still required for the article, so now you have a source for that

[17] If you’re reading this and know of some others that are on equal par with those, feel free to add to the list!

[18] If you’re bored and feel like creating articles, check if a band has articles for its member. Then see if all those members have articles for all their bands. Then see if all those bands have articles for all those members, and so on =P

[19] Still don’t get it? Here we go, step by step. 1) Powderfinger is notable. 2) Therefore, Ian Haug (part of Powderfinger) is notable. 3) Therefore, The Predators are notable. 4) Therefore, Ross McLennan (part of The Predators) is notable.

[20] Including side-projects, if official - erm...if the guy has said he’s part of the band and has done some work with them

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