Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Record Labels

Timeline of Major Record Labels

To those who are familiar with the history of major record labels: please see my comment at Template talk:Timeline of Major Record Labels#Decca, MCA, Warner and update/improve that template as necessary. Thanks. - dcljr (talk) 20:01, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Crying Sun Records

There is currently a discussion at Crying Sun Records to redirect/merge it with Radio Birdman, your comments/feedback are welcome at Crying Sun Records merger proposal. Dan arndt (talk) 10:15, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Merger proposal: Atlantic Records UK to Atlantic Records

Hi, I've started a proposal to merge Atlantic Records UK into Atlantic Records. You can join the discussion here: Talk:Atlantic Records#Merger proposal – Atlantic Records UK — bieχχ (talk) 10:40, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

NCORP

It seems the notability standards for recording companies are the basic ones for companies. By that standard, there seems to be almost no sourcing for notability present in most of the articles in this field., and, furthermore, the contents seems to rely only the the company's own page. DGG ( talk ) 05:34, 7 October 2018 (UTC)

Mistlur Records

Article has been tagged with {{Unreferenced}} since 2007, and hasn't been edited for anything other than cleanup since 2008. A talk page post (also from 2007 and added by the article's creator) states the label is "certainly notable", but there's no indication that it meets WP:ORG. Perhaps, there's a specific guideline for record labels which it satsifies? I was thinking this should be WP:PRODded, but I'd figure I check here first to see if any feels otherwise. WP:REDIRECT might also be a viable option since according the article, it's now owned by MNW Music. That article, however, is also tagged as unsourced; so, reverting might just be redirecting a problem article to another problem article. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

Requesting peer review of Bitbird

Hello. This is to let the WikiProject know that I've opened a Peer review page for the article Bitbird, which I have slightly improved over this month. If anyone is interesting in reviewing the page, any comments should be made here. Thanks! Jalen D. Folf (talk) 20:25, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Project status

@Richard3120 and EddieHugh: The Albums project might be willing to adopt this mostly inactive/on life support project, if nobody here disagrees violently. For redirects such as RWG Records or maybe Coptic Cat (still on AFC/Redirects) it's simple enough, just add the project on the talk page if the redirect has a talk page. But for "my" first draft some nits almost went seriously wrong, e.g., I didn't grok that DRAFTNOCAT has nothing to do with project templates on draft talk pages. –84.46.52.138 (talk) 09:35, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not part of this project; I just answered a query when passing by once. EddieHugh (talk) 11:31, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Notability and sourcing

I notice, upon looking at the notability criteria more generally, that for music, and that for companies, that no specific mention is made of record labels. I notice further, that, not only do many of the articles on record labels seem to fail the appropriate notability criteria (as mentioned by DGG (talk · contribs)) as well as the appropriate criteria for references and sources. Could I please receive some clarifications on the due process for (i) adding articles and (ii) cleaning up existing articles?

Also, I am new, but, would I be correct in guessing that this project page lacks the layout of fex. WP:LING due to inactivity? Would I be permitted to edit the page up to the standards, or is it best to pass a motion somewhere to merge it with other projects, as is discussed lower in the page? LingNerd007 (talk) 21:24, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Record labels are not specifically covered with their own section in WP:MUSIC, and there is no consensus about how to do so (I attempted, once, and failed). WP:MUSIC does have language in the section on artists that gives the only real guidance about judging notability - length of operation and significance of roster, taken holistically. Any label that meets the GNG, additionally, would also merit inclusion. There are very few people actively working on record label articles - I'm one of the most active, and most of what I do is watch over a bunch of them to ward off vandalism and overly-hasty deletion, rather than write new articles or work on sourcing. (I have a day job now.) This Project isn't very active; WikiProjects, it seems, tend to rise and fall based on the presence or absence of one or a handful of extremely active editors, and I think in general that fewer WikiProjects are active than last decade (or perhaps communities have just moved on to other, shinier topics). It was proposed not too long ago to close up shop here and upmerge operations to WikiProject Albums or WikiProject Discographies - to be honest, in the long run, I have a feeling that's all going to end up being the same house. Chubbles (talk) 00:27, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmmm. This leaves me feeling unsure how to treat any given article - some of those I have looked at often only refer to their own site, for example. The criteria of having noteworthy secondary publications seems the most useful in creation, but by this same metric the aforementioned should be nominated for deletion. Personally, this would seem needlessly hasty in what is likely to be the majority of cases. I suppose for now I will err on the side of caution with adding articles, but I'll leave motions for deletion alone in the hope that the matter is eventually cleared up. Where possible and when interested I'll add sources. I'm not particularly a 'record label' person, but I do like music and reading about said music, so I am happy to help where I can given clear direction and parallel with personal interest. As regards activity on Projects here, I feel that anecdotally this is linked to the lessening of activity on old-school message- and posting-boards, forums, and so on (excluding Reddit and the various image boards, which seem to only grow in popularity). I don't think it's that people want what's hip, but the two are undeniably associated on the subjective level. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LingNerd007 (talk • contribs) 00:33, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Generally you representing "any contributor" decide, e.g., for labels with poor references add the relevant cleanup templates such as {{unreferenced}} or {{primary}}, and show some good will, e.g., convert some ELs to proper references. If nothing happens for some months try a {{PROD}} unless there was already an older PROD or AfD. For a seriously dead page that will kill it. Otherwise, if the PROD was removed without a proper reason, you can try an AfD after showing some WP:BEFORE good will if possible. Or note that you failed to find any RS. I think that extending enwiki is more fun than cleaning up, YMMV. –84.46.52.138 (talk) 04:01, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi folks, I am working on improving the Ripple Music page. As part of this record label project, it would be valuable to develop notability criteria that is specific to record labels. I am going back and forth with some other users about notability for a company/organization vs. music notability guidelines in terms of press coverage. But it is impossible to divorce a record label's press coverage from its artists, nor would it make sense to do so. This should be addressed as part of WikiProject: Record Labels. According to the Wikipedia:Five pillars, "Wikipedia has policies and guidelines, but they are not carved in stone; their content and interpretation can evolve over time. The principles and spirit matter more than literal wording." Record labels present a case where these guidelines need to evolve. Jessiemay1984 (talk) 13:08, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Categories with the most company articles tagged for failing NCORP and lacking references

The discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Notability/Archive 64#Categories_with_the_most_company_articles_tagged_for_failing_NCORP_and_lacking_references might be of interest to this project. A significant number of articles on record labels are tagged as having no references at all. I understand that bringing them all to AfD at the same time is overwhelming and likely beyond the capacity of the volunteers at this project and the participants at AfD. Is a clean-up effort possible? Vexations (talk) 04:04, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Concerning LabelsBase

So I tried to make a thread about this at RSN recently, however it was archived without contribution. My pet peeve with LabelsBase is that after a quick look at the site's About page, I find that it falls under WP:UGC, posing a risk of incorrect information, as is the case with Nicole Bus (see this; nowhere on here does it reference Roc Nation as of this post). At the moment, it is currently being used in a few articles (see Special:Search/Labelsbase), without any of these article's watchers possibly aware of the issue. I was hoping that if found unreliable, the references can possibly be replaced with better sources describing artist connections or removed entirely? Any thoughts from this WikiProject regarding this? Jalen Folf (talk) 23:37, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree, it is UGC. If better sources can be found it should be replaced, and if a contentious claim cited to LabelsBase, it should be removed. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 18:46, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

High Voltage Sounds (ca. 2005 Manchester)

I've been going back and forth on this for hours since I first stumbled across it, and I feel like I'm getting nowhere so I wanted to bounce it off the experts.

Wikipedia has an article, after a fashion, for High Voltage Sounds, a Manchester, UK record label that apparently operated for just a few years in the mid-2000s. To look at the article, you wouldn't think there was anything at all there, and indeed it's been duly tagged as being of questionable notability. My first instinct on finding it was that I should just WP:PROD it and put it out of its misery. Because:

• All of the significant content in the article was created over the course of just two days, way back in November 2009.
• The article was written in just three edits — two by the same user, and a third by an IP user who was almost certainly the same person. (The IP edit was reverted by a link-checker bot for adding offsite Facebook links. The logged-in editor then came back and repeated the edit.)
• Since the third and last content addition on 2009-11-28, the article has received nothing but occasional housekeeping edits from WikiGnomes and bots.
• The article does almost nothing to establish notability for the subject.
• Nothing in the article is cited at all, and the only "references" (only because they're in <ref> tags) are a Wayback mirror of the label's dead homepage, and broken Wayback versions of the aforementioned Facebook links that don't actually lead to the originally-linked content anymore (they both got broken into pointing at archived copies of the Facebook landing page.)
• Much of the article content reads like self-promotion from the label's owner, Richard Cheetham, and in fact it's very possible that's exactly what it is, and the editor who created the article is none other than Mr. Cheetham, or someone personally affiliated with him.
• Even the self-promotion is kind of sad, going on about how Cheetham is preparing to make this big comeback and start releasing records again, something that very clearly never happened.

In short, the whole thing looks like an unencyclopedic disaster that should be speedily deleted and forgotten.

And yet... and yet... things seem different once you start Googling around for information on High Voltage Sounds. The effort can be complicated, somewhat, by the fact that it shares its name with a DJ service in Massapequa, Long Island. As I'm located in NYC, Google tends to push those results heavily to the top of the list, even though the query "High Voltage Sounds" "New York" has 14,400 hits (many of them false positives), while "High Voltage Sounds" UK has 19,400 hits (many of which are also false positives).

When you start looking at those 19,400 hits, though, things get even more confounding. The "picture" of High Voltage you get just doesn't reconcile with the impressions created by our article.

• Take, for instance, this September 2005 article from the Manchester Evening News, "ITC Preview: High Voltage Sounds Showcase". It's a promotional fluff piece for a club night the label's sponsoring, but the (unnamed) author opens and closes it like this:

But as someone who's juggles his studies with running a successful club night, fanzine, up-and-coming indie label and music journalism, Richard can be forgiven for not feigning false modesty.

And who’s to say given the popularity of HV's various products that his current pre-occupation won’t soon become a full-time occupation.

And with High Voltage Sounds releasing a compilation of new Manchester bands in November, if you can trust anyone to find the best in local talent, it surely must be Richard Cheetham.

• Or there's a second Evening News piece, from around a month later, which kicks off:

LIKE all the greatest Manc success stories, High Voltage is typically one that no-one saw coming.

Conceived by student and local music fanatic Richard Cheetham, High Voltage has grown from a free music fanzine into a popular club night and, most recently, a bona-fide record label.

Next week sees the release of a High Voltage Sounds compilation featuring a quite staggering 20 local bands.

• Fast-forward to two years later, and a Q&A with Cheetham shows up on the BBC's website, touting the label's 4th birthday. High Voltage is described unironically as one of the hottest labels in the city! (And that city, let's remember, is frickin' Manchester, the home of Joy Division, New Order, the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, Tony Wilson, Factory and The Haçienda. It is, as they say, "kind of big deal".)

But, for all that, High Voltage Sounds' actual output as a record label is... laughable. The label put out, according to our article, 21 records. Total. Ever. 18 singles, two compilations, and what sounds like an EP. (The article calls it a "mini-album", and links to mini-LP where it's explained that mini-LPs are distinct from EPs because, while an EP is typically 3–6 tracks, mini-LPs will have more and run slightly longer. ...The High Voltage "mini-album" was 6 tracks.) Anyway, the point is that High Voltage never even released so much as one full-length album for any of the acts on their roster. Add in a mention of financial strife between Cheetham and The KBC, the label's biggest act until the conflict led to their departure, and an outline starts to appear that your imagination can fill in pretty easily. And that's the thing: it feels like there's a story here, about a presumably-young, presumably-personable figure who captures the attention of the local music community, local press, local scene... but just as quickly fades away when the man fails to live up to the myth. It's a cautionary tale, surely, if nothing else.

...But that's the other side of the coin: It feels like a potentially juicy story, but even if that's the case it's not Wikipedia's story to tell. It might be a great subject for a music journalist or a pop culture historian to sink their teeth into, but unless they have already told it and can be used as sources, there's no way for Wikipedia to pursue it directly without veering immediately over the WP:OR line and becoming irreparably unencyclopedic. Maybe Cheetham and High Voltage Sounds should be notable, but even so it's not Wikipedia's job to make them notable.

So, that's where I'm at. Opinions welcome regarding what should be done with the High Voltage Sounds article, and obviously commentary on my state of mental health would be fair game, considering I've written easily twice as much here about the article, as can actually be found in the article. (Oh, and please do {{ping}} / {{reply to}} / etc. me if you reply, or it could be weeks before I notice.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 09:28, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

@FeRDNYC: That's a really nice piece of analysis. When I look at notability for record labels, I look for indications that they had an impact on the careers of notable artists, or that they had an impact on a genre, or that they have an impact on a regions musical (poetic, whatever) culture. I would say only the last might be met. The label seems to have had one notable artist, and some impact on their career, but that's not really enough. So does the article clearly meet the general notability guideline? I don't think the second Manchester News counts as significant coverage, and it seems to be based on a press release. The First is intriguing, as is the BBC article, but both are interviews which are highly sympathetic to the topic, at the very least. It's interesting that the BBC doesn't list an author. I'd say this is a bit borderline, but that it falls short of notability by Wikipedia's standards. My opinion only. In any case, it should be nominated for deletion, or information from these sources should be added. Thanks so much for the work you put into this. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 03:14, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

@78.26: Yeah, agreed. I think I just needed someone to talk me into what I already really knew: Imagination and potential aside, there really just isn't anything there worth preserving or investing any effort on. Thanks. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 13:00, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

New bot to remove completed infobox requests

Hello! I have recently created a bot to remove completed infobox requests and am sending this message to WikiProject Record Labels since the project currently has a backlogged infobox request category. Details about the task can be found at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT 2, but in short it removes all infobox requests from articles with an infobox, once a week. To sign up, reply with {{ping|Trialpears}} and tell me if any special considerations are required for the Wikiproject. For example: if only a specific infobox should be detected, such as {{infobox journal}} for WikiProject Academic Journals; or if an irregularly named infobox such as {{starbox begin}} should be detected. Feel free to ask if you have any questions!

Sent on behalf of Trialpears (talk) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:34, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

La voce del padrone

There is a very short and unsourced article for this label, which was basically the Italian arm of HMV. I'm wondering whether this should be kept as a separate article or redirected/merged into His Master's Voice... the reason I am asking is because there is an album titled La voce del Padrone which should probably be the primary topic here (and with the correct capitalization), and I want to find out if we need to go to the bother of creating disambiguators. Thank you. Richard3120 (talk) 15:45, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

It appears I'm rather behind on reading this page. Certainly this was an Italian operation of HMV at the beginning, but I believe it became a separate operation during the 2nd World War. Not that you'd know anything about that by the article! European recording history isn't my area of expertise, though. I get confused by the myriad organizational layers of HMV in general. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 17:26, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Blue Note Records

This article needs to be much better sourced and it probably calls for a general re-write. Despite the large number of inline citations, this article is poorly sourced. Many paragraphs lack any citations. Some sentences show three citations at the end. I suspect there is ome original research here, too.

I am reading Richard Cook, Blue Note Records: The Biography (Boston: Justin Charles & Co., 2003). This is a good looking book and could be the go-to source for this article.

I have no experience writing about record labels and only a little background about jazz. I have questions about the structure of articles about record labels. Thanks, Oldsanfelipe2 (talk) 13:51, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi Oldsanfelipe2! Also the Michael Cuscuna, Michel Ruppli discography should be referenced. I don't think there's a set MOS for record labels, in general I think a good entry should describe the label's history, any important artists and recordings the label produced, and some analysis on the label's impact on culture. This article does that fairly well, but although it appears it was written by a knowledgeable person as you mention it fails WP:V. 78.26 _{(spin me / revolutions)} 17:37, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Small Company Promotional Entry

This is a small Music Production House, where 10 peoepl work, who is using this WIKI platform to promote their shop. Is this what Wikipedia is now: a "White pages Telephone book"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A05:DCC0:3:1300:3554:5EC0:5498:641B (talk) 16:37, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia has NEVER been a directory listing, and in fact WP:NOTDIR specifically states that Wikipedia is not to be used for that purpose. Unfortunately, because anyone can edit Wikipedia and create articles, people often use Wikipedia to publicize their business, and because there are six million articles on the English Wikipedia and only a limited number of regular editors, promotional articles often go unnoticed for a long while. But you haven't said which article you are talking about, so how are we supposed to check if it should be on Wikipedia or not? Richard3120 (talk) 17:09, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

RfC on artist lists in a record label article with the existence of a standalone list

The RfC tag may have expired, but I'm still looking for final comments on Talk:Monstercat#RfC: Standalone artists list and sourcing a label's website before determining a consensus. Thanks in advance. Jalen Folf (talk) 03:03, 22 November 2020 (UTC)