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Revision as of 12:24, 18 September 2009

For singles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs.
For the notability guideline, see WP:NMG § Albums.

WikiProject Albums is an organization of Wikipedians dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of all kinds of musical albums. We seek ways of simplifying album pages so users can get the basic information fast, creating high-quality new pages, ensuring a standardized format and make articles as informative as possible. There is also a WikiProject Albums Featured Albums Project, which seeks to coordinate efforts to get as many albums as possible promoted to Featured status.

Feel free to ask questions on the talk page. Below is a basic guide to writing an article on a specific album of music; this is only a guide and you should feel free to personalize an article as you see fit, though others may change it to fit our standards.

Subpages

Album pages by quality
Quality
Total
FA 166
FL 74
GA 1,522
B 1,593
C 9,273
Start 59,605
Stub 77,701
List 1,541
Category 47,873
Disambig 238
File 181,070
Project 188
Redirect 28,498
Template 714
Draft 189
Assessed 410,245
Unassessed 8
Total 410,253
WikiWork factors (?) ω = 809,146 Ω = 5.40

Project templates

Participate

Everyone is welcome to join the project and contribute. Lists of members can be found in Category:WikiProject Albums members and this list.

To join the project, please add this userbox by adding {{User WikiProject Albums}} to your user page. You will automatically be added to the members category.

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Albums.

Welcome new member

If you'd like to welcome new users with a message that is tailored to the project, please use the code {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/New welcome}} which will leave this message on their talk page.

Album articles

When you create or find a new album article, please add {{Album}} to the top of the talk page. The {{Album}} template has several optional parameters:

  • The parameter class adds the article to categories based on its assessment. Use stub, start, C, B, GA or FA. See /Assessment for details on these ratings and for importance.
  • If the page has no infobox, set needs-infobox to yes.
  • If the page needs immediate attention, answer yes, otherwise remove this line.
  • The parameter auto is for bots. Pay no attention to the bot behind the curtain.
{{Album
  | class         = 
  | importance    = 
  | attention     = 
  | needs-infobox = 
  | auto          = 
}}

Barnstar

To recognize a fellow editor for his or her work on album articles, feel free to use the Project's barnstar. Add the following code to his or her talk page. Type your own personal message in place of "message".

{{subst:WikiProject Albums Barnstar|message ~~~~}}

The WikiProject Albums Barnstar
{{{1}}}

Notability

While members of this project like to see new articles about albums, not all albums deserve articles at Wikipedia. Many consider any original studio album by a notable artist to be important enough to deserve an article, other editors follow stricter guidelines. See the following policies and policy proposals:

Style

Naming

The article name should be the title of the album, disambiguated if necessary. Do not pre-emptively disambiguate! When there is no other encyclopedic use of the album title, the article should reside at the normal name, e.g. London Calling, not London Calling (album). In cases where disambiguation is needed, the term (EP) should be used for EPs, (video) for video albums and (album) for other albums, e.g. Insomniac (album) and Gas Food Lodging (EP). For multiple albums with the same title, use the artist name to distinguish the different albums, e.g. Down to Earth (Rainbow album) and Down to Earth (Ozzy Osbourne album). For artists who release multiple albums with the same name, disambiguate by year, e.g. Weezer (1994 album) and Weezer (2001 album) (unless the albums were released the same year, in which case they can be disambiguated by some commonly accepted convention).

For split albums of which there is no single official title, use the two artist names separated with two spaces and a forward slash, such as Isis / Pig Destroyer. The artist that is on the A-side (or whose tracks come first on a CD) should be placed first in the article name. If two bands release more than one split together and occupy the same sides on each release, disambiguate normally by year, adding, for example, (2000 album). If the split has two titles, one per side, use the same forward-slash formatting, such as Jihad / Freezing Moon.

If the album title uses the Latin alphabet, the article name should be at that title. Translations of titles in languages other than English should not be used as titles unless such a translation is commonly used as a title for the album in the English-speaking world. For example, Født til å Herske, not Born to Rule, Swanesang, not Swan Song, but Chant, not Canto (because the album was marketed as "Chant" in most English-speaking countries).

If the album title does not use the Latin alphabet, the article name should be the transliterated form of the title using Latin characters. For example, Vrisko To Logo Na Zo, not Βρίσκω Το Λόγο Να Ζω or I Find the Reason to Live, and Kaihōku, not 解放区 or Liberated District, but Common Jasmin Orange, not Qi li xiang, 七里香, or Seven Mile Fragrance (because the English name "Common Jasmin Orange" appears on the album cover along with the Chinese name). The original language title should appear in parentheses (brackets) in the opening line of the article following the transliteration.

See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

Formatting

Songs and singles are placed in "quotation marks", album titles are italicized and artists are left alone, with punctuation outside quotation marks, for example,

The Beatles' songs "Taxman", "Eleanor Rigby" and "Love You To" are from their album Revolver.

Links should only be created to song articles that don't exist if you believe that the song most certainly deserves an article.

Capitalization

Shortcut

In titles of songs, albums, and band names in the English language, the project standard is to capitalize:

  1. The first word and last word in the title.
  2. All other words except for coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor), prepositions (of, to, in, for, on, over), articles (an, a, the), and the word to in infinitives. Note that short verbs (Is, Are, Be, Do) and pronouns (Me, It, His) are capitalized.

In titles of songs or albums in a language other than English, the project standard is to use the capitalization utilized by that language, not the English capitalization. (If you are unsure about the capitalization standards of other languages, check with the appropriate WikiProject or language Manual of Style, the foreign-language Wikipedias, or the MusicBrainz documentation.)

For more style suggestions, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD/Capitalization.

Dating

Please try to add the year in parentheses after mentioning an album for the first time in an article or paragraph (unless the year is contained within the sentence) as in: "Nirvana's next album was the breakthrough classic Nevermind (1991)". Do not use piped links to "years in music" e.g. [[1991 in music|1991]], instead add (see 1991 in music) where you feel it is appropriate.

Do not describe uncertain dates by using the season name, eg "released in winter, 1995". This can be ambiguous as northern and southern-hemisphere seasons occur at opposite times of the year. Instead, use the most accurate date possible, such as "February 1995" or "early 1995", if a more precise date cannot be verified.

Shortcuts

The date an album was leaked onto the Internet is not notable unless it results in some other action that is notable, such as being directly responded to by the musical artist or their management, or the leak itself receiving broad media coverage. Do not add leak dates to articles unless a notable consequence of the leak can be properly sourced to the same regular, reliable media sources that would be expected for any other content in the album's article. A website which announces album leaks but contains no other content, such as diditleak.co.uk, is not an appropriate source under the requirements of WP:RS.

Disambiguating links

When linking genres and other terms in the article, be sure it points to the appropriate music-related article and not a disambiguation page. For example, rock should point to rock music and not rock; alternative should point to alternative rock and not alternative, a disambiguation page. Use piped links if necessary. Other terms to look out for are: pop music, band (musical ensemble), LP (gramophone record) and several more.

For more style suggestions, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD.

Infobox

Article body

Articles on albums should normally be about only one album, including possible reissues. These guidelines assume an article about one album is being written, and will need adjusting for articles about multiple albums, for example by shifting the heading nesting levels down one step.

Each article should begin with the album infobox (see above), followed by the lead section which should include basics such as title, artist, release date, record label, and a word or two about genre and critical reception.

Describe history, themes (musical or lyrical), a consideration of its specific influences, specific followers, where it fits in its genre and what leanings it may have toward others, reasons for the order of tracks (if any), etc. Also, synthesize the general critical reception of the album, being as detailed as possible. Be sure to note minority opinions as well, properly attributed (preferably with an external link). Also, any way the album affected the cultural consciousness of a society or culture.

There are various methods for writing album articles, but in the course of writing them two distinct styles of article (that are actually opposite ends of a spectrum) have emerged most prominently, either of which may be appropriate, depending on the album in question.

Add a paragraph or two on how the album fits in the development of music. What does it sound similar to? What inspired the artists? Who listened to this album, then started a band of their own and became famous ten years later?

For an example of featured articles, see 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and Enta da Stage by Black Moon.

For more detailed guidelines on writing music articles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD.

Track listing

A track listing should generally be formatted as a numbered list.

  1. "Complete song title" (John Doe, Brian Smith) – 4:23
    • First verse: Name of rapper
    • Second verse: Name of rapper
    • Samples: Name of sample source (preferably including artist, song, and album)
  2. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kelly Kalamazoo) – 3:24
  3. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kalamazoo, Smith, David Whitman) – 2:34

In more complicated situations, a table or the {{Tracklist}} template may be a better choice. If a table is used, it should be formatted using class="wikitable", using column headings "#", "Title" and "Length" for the track number, the track title and the track length, respectively (see Help:Table).

Track names should be in quotes in the track listing and in the rest of the article. A track that is a medley of multiple songs should be inside one set of quotes, like this: "Song 1/Song 2". Untitled tracks should be listed as Untitled (without quotes). If a track has an article of its own, the track name should link to that article.

Note the standard method of attributing songwriters—write (and link) the full name the first time it appears, and then just give the last name (unless the first initial or entire first name is necessary to disambiguate it, as in the Gallagher brothers of Oasis, or Brad and Brett Warren of The Warren Brothers). If all songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated at the top as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano." If several songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano, except where noted."

Track lengths should be included for each track. Use a spaced en dash (–) rather than a hyphen (-) as a dividing horizontal punctuation mark before the track length. (Note that they may both look the same in the edit box.) You can insert it from the special character list below the edit box (see Help:Special characters) or copy and paste it from here. You can also add it by writing – HTML entity to the edit box (like this "–") but this makes the code less readable. If you think that this is too difficult, you can still use a hyphen, and hope that someone is going to change it into a dash. This holds true both in "Track listing" and "Personnel" sections. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Dashes.

Particularly for hip hop albums, it is helpful to list which members of a group (or guests) rap on which verses as well as mentioning sampling sources.

The track listing should be under a primary heading named "Track listing". If there are significantly different track listings for different editions, these can be listed under sub-headings. If the album was released primarily on CD and spans multiple discs, these should be listed separately under sub-headings named "Disc one", "Disc two" and so on. Albums originally released primarily on vinyl or cassette should similarly list the tracks of each side separately under sub-headings named "Side one" and "Side two".

Track listing examples

The following examples all show the track listing for Before These Crowded Streets by Dave Matthews Band, using each of the methods discussed above.

{{Tracklist}} template
No.TitleWriter(s)Guest musician(s)Length
1."Pantala Naga Pampa"Dave Matthews 0:40
2."Rapunzel"Matthews, Stefan Lessard, Carter BeaufordButch Taylor6:00
3."The Last Stop"Matthews, LessardBéla Fleck6:57
4."Don't Drink the Water"MatthewsAlanis Morissette, Fleck7:01
5."Stay (Wasting Time)"Matthews, Lessard, LeRoi MooreTawatha Agee, Cindy Myzell, Brenda White King5:35
6."Halloween"MatthewsMorissette, John D'earth, Kronos Quartet5:07
7."The Stone"MatthewsD'earth, Kronos Quartet7:28
8."Crush"MatthewsTaylor8:09
9."The Dreaming Tree"Matthews, LessardGreg Howard8:48
10."Pig"Matthews, Lessard, Beauford, Moore, Boyd Tinsley 6:57
11."Spoon"MatthewsMorissette, Fleck7:33

Personnel

A personnel section should be included under a primary heading "Personnel" and should generally be formatted as an bulleted list of names and forms of participation, with en dashes between the two (see track listing section). The names should always be linked if an article exists. The forms of participation (for example instruments) should be written in lowercase, delimited by commas, and linked on the first occurrence only. Remember to pipe the links if needed, for example "percussion" to percussion instrument and "keyboard" to keyboard instrument.

Charts

Main page: Wikipedia:Record charts

If an album has successfully charted on any country's top albums charts, such as the U.S. Billboard 200 or the UK Albums Chart, a section should be made displaying the chart information. If an album charts in only one or two countries, a table may not be necessary.

WP:GOODCHARTS is a list compiled of charting information that can be referenced. Each ranking should have an associated reference to the chart it is taken from or the searchable archive where the information can be obtained.

Certifications

An album's certification can be worked into the body of the article, or a table can be created if an album has achieved multiple certifications.

For more information and help on certifications, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Certifications.

Release history

Albums are often released on different dates, on different labels, and on different formats in different regions. This information can be included in a table. Note that the infobox should only include the first release date and label.

Region Date Label Format Catalog
United Kingdom November 22, 1968 Apple Records mono double LP PMC 7067-8
stereo double LP PCS 7067-8
United States November 25, 1968 Apple, Capitol Records double LP SWBO 101
Worldwide reissue July 20, 1987 Apple, Parlophone, EMI double CD CDP 7 46443-4 2
Japan March 11, 1998 Toshiba-EMI double CD TOCP 51119-20
Japan January 21, 2004 Toshiba-EMI remastered LP TOJP 60139-40

External links

Shortcut

Album articles may contain an external links section of links to relevant external resources about the album. Links to resources about the artist rather than the album do not need to be included here, as these should be linked from the artist's article instead. Links to individual reviews shouldn't be included here, but links to professional reviews can be included in the professional reviews section of the infobox. Appropriate links may include links to chords or lyrics for the tracks on the album. Note however that lyrics may be protected by copyright, and external resources that reprint lyrics may be violating that copyright, in which case they should not be linked.

Categories

For album articles, there are three "top-level" categories: Category:Albums by artist, Category:Albums by year and Category:Albums by genre. Each album page should be placed into two categories, Category:<Artist name> albums and Category:<year> albums, which should be sub-categories of the respective top-level category. For consistency, the artist name should be the same as the title of their article (in terms of punctuation, "&"/"and", use of "The", etc.).

For example, Reign in Blood by Slayer was released in 1986 so it has the categories Category:Slayer albums and Category:1986 albums. To add it to these categories, you would place the following code at the bottom of the article: 

[[Category:Slayer albums]]
[[Category:1986 albums]]

Category:Slayer albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist, Category:American albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist nationality and Category:Thrash metal albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by genre. Category:1986 albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by year.

Previous discussions have formed the consensus that a category for an artist's albums should be created even if they have only released one album (irrespective of whether they are likely to release more in the future). Please ensure that every category you create belongs to at least one other category, otherwise, it cannot be navigated to and will be listed at Special:Uncategorizedcategories.

Be sure that the categories are sorted properly. Use the {{DEFAULTSORT:}} magic word to control the alphabetization on the category page. For example: 

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinks, The}}
[[Category:The Kinks albums]]
[[Category:1964 albums]]

Note that albums should be alphabetized using the first letter of the title, while artists should be alphabetized as last name, first name.

See also: Help:Category

Discography

There are no explicit guidelines on how to incorporate an album article in a discography. Of course, there are several ways how it can be done. In all cases, please keep the following hints in mind:

  • sort the albums, e.g. ascending by date (since a discography is in some sense a chronology),
  • if you use tables, use wikicode, to make the list easier to maintain.

A simple way to list albums could be:

  • first album (year of release)
  • second album (year of release)

Note that album titles should be in italics and only albums, not release years should be linked.

A different way using a table could be:

Title Release date Notes Label
Firstname 1999-01-01 first studio album Label name
Secondname 2000-01-01 another note Label name

Most album covers are non-free images, and are not permitted in discographies (or any other gallery or list). See Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria #8 and Wikipedia:Non-free content#Acceptable_images for clarification of this policy.

For further examples, see Category:Discographies.
For current discussion about discography format, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians/Article guidelines § Discography section.

Work to be done

Are you looking for Project-related work to do? Here is a list of work that may need to be done.

Template:ArticleAlertbotSubscription

WP:ALBUM category summary
Last updated 17:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC) [manual]
1. Needs attention 256
2. Unsorted stubs 0
3. Uncategorised 0
4. Uncategorized by artist 0
5. Needs infobox 113
6. Non-standard infoboxes 4
7. Needs a by-year category 0
8.Upcoming albums need checking 224
Maintenance lists
New articles found by bot X

Review sites

The following is a list of some websites with reviews or links to reviews that you can use in album infoboxes:

Non-professional reviews

As a matter of policy, reviews from these review sources are not considered professional, and should not be included in album infoboxes:

Reviews and ratings which only summarize other reviews and ratings should not be included either:

Non-English reviews

As the number of reviews should be limited, and as languages other than English are not understood by a large number of readers, reviews in languages other than English should generally not be included unless the language is especially relevant to the album in question.

New articles

For a list of new articles found by AlexNewArtBot, see User:AlexNewArtBot/AlbumSearchResult.

See also

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