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Discogs

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Discogs
File:Discogs.Logo.png
Type of site
Music
Available inEnglish (US), German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, French
OwnerZink Media, Inc.
Created byKevin Lewandowski
RevenueAdvertisement (logging-in removes all ads), Marketplace Seller Fees
URLDiscogs.com
CommercialPartially
RegistrationOptional

Discogs, short for discographies, is a website and crowdsourced database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are located in Portland, Oregon, US. While the site lists releases in all genres and on all formats, it is especially known as the largest online database of electronic music releases, and of releases on vinyl media. Discogs currently contains over 7 million releases, by nearly 4.5 million artists, across over 892,000 labels, contributed from over 280,000 contributor user accounts – with these figures constantly growing as users continually add previously unlisted releases to the site over time.[2][3]

History

The discogs.com domain name was registered on 30 August 2000,[4] and Discogs itself was launched in November 2000 by programmer, DJ, and music fan Kevin Lewandowski originally as a database of electronic music.[5]

He was inspired by the success of community-built sites such as Slashdot, eBay, and Open Directory Project, and decided to use this model for a music discography database.[citation needed]

The site's original goal was to build the most comprehensive database of electronic music, organized around the artists, labels, and releases available in that genre. In 2003 the Discogs system was completely rewritten,[6] and in January 2004 it began to support other genres, starting with hip hop. Since then, it has expanded to include rock and jazz in January 2005 and funk/soul, Latin, and reggae in October of the same year. In January 2006 blues and non-music (e.g. comedy records, field recordings, interviews) were added. Classical music started being supported in June 2007, and in October 2007 the "final genres were turned on" – adding support for the Stage & Screen, Brass & Military, Children's, and Folk, World, & Country music genres, allowing capture of virtually every single kind of audio recording that has ever been released.

On 30 June 2004, Discogs published a report, which included information about the number of its contributors. This report claimed that Discogs had 15,788 contributors and 260,789 releases.[7]

On 20 July 2007 a new system for sellers was introduced on the site called Market Price History. It made information available to users who paid for a subscription –though 60 days information was free– access to the past price items were sold for up to 12 months ago by previous sellers who had sold exactly the same release. At the same time, the US$12 per year charge for advanced subscriptions was abolished, as it was felt that the extra features should be made available to all subscribers now that a better, some may say fairer, revenue stream had been found from sellers and purchasers. However, at the beginning of 2008, the Market Price History was also made free of charge for all users, still giving up to a 12-month view of historical sales data for any release.

Milestones

Discogs publishes information indicating the number of releases, labels, and artists presently in its database,[2] along with its contributors:[3]

Date Releases Artists Labels Contributors Note
30 June 2004 260,789 unknown unknown 15,788 By mid 2004 releases crossed the quarter million mark.
2006 500,000+ unknown unknown unknown In 2006 releases passed the half million mark.
25 July 2010 2,006,878 1,603,161 169,923 unknown By mid 2010 releases crossed the 2m mark.
4 March 2014 4,698,683 3,243,448 576,324 185,283 By mid 2014 labels had crossed the half million mark.
11 June 2014 4,956,221 3,375,268 612,264 194,432 In mid 2014 releases were passing the 5m mark.
26 December 2014 5,505,617 3,638,804 680,131 215,337 By late 2014 contributors surpassed the 200k mark.
30 May 2015 6,001,424 3,874,147 743,267 237,967 By mid 2015 releases surpassed the 6m mark.
31 March 2016 7,005,177 4,455,198 892,271 281,579 By early 2016 releases surpassed the 7m mark, and artists nearly the 4.5m mark.

Other projects

In mid 2014, a side project website called VinylHub[8] was started, in order for users to add record shops and stores from around the world, with information concerning location, contact details, what type of items they stocked, et al.

In late 2014, the company released two new beta websites. Filmogs[9] is where users can submit both Films and Releases as separate entities, meaning users could add their physical film collections and/or add films generally to the database, and track them as part of their collection or similar. Gearogs[10] lets users add and track music equipment like synths, drum machines, and other electronic music making equipment.

API

In mid-August 2007, Discogs data became publicly accessible via a RESTful, XML-based API and a license that allowed specially attributed use, but did not allow anyone to "alter, transform, or build upon" the data.[11][12][13] The license has since been changed to a public domain one. Prior to the advent of this license and API, Discogs data was only accessible via the Discogs web site's HTML interface and was intended to be viewed only using web browsers.[14] The HTML interface remains the only authorized way to modify Discogs data.[12]

On 7 June 2011 version 2 of the API was released.[15] Notable in this release was that a license key was no longer required, the default response was changed from XML to JSON, and the 5000 queries per day limit was removed (although a limit of 2000 image lookups per days was introduced).

On 1 November 2011 a major update to version 2 of the API was released.[16] This new release dropped support for XML, data is always returned in JSON format, however the monthly data dumps of new data are only provided in XML format.

On 1 February 2014 Discogs modified their API so that image requests will now require OAuth authorization, requiring each user of third-party applications to have a Discogs "application ID", with image requests now limited to 1,000 per day. Additionally the Premium API service was dropped.[17]

On 24 June 2014 Discogs deprecated their XML API in lieu of a JSON-formatted API.[18]

Discogs also allows full XML downloads of its Release, Artist, and Label data through the data.discogs.com subdomain.

Contribution system

The data in Discogs comes from submissions contributed by users who have registered accounts on the web site. The system has gone through four major revisions.

Version One (V1)

All incoming submissions were checked for formal and factual correctness by privileged users called "moderators", or "mods" for short, who had been selected by site management. Submissions and edits wouldn't become visible or searchable until they received a single positive vote from a "mod". An even smaller pool of super-moderators called "editors" had the power to vote on proposed edits to artist & label data.

Version Two (V2)

This version introduced the concept of "submission limits" which prevented new users from submitting more than 2-3 releases for moderation. The number of possible submissions by a user increased on a logarithmic scale. The purpose of this was two-fold: 1) it helped keep the submission queue fairly small and manageable for moderators, and 2) it allowed the new user to acclimatise themselves slowly with the many formatting rules and guidelines of submitting to Discogs. Releases required a number of votes to be accepted into the database - initially the number of votes required was from 4 different moderators but in time the amount was decreased to 3 and then 2.

Version Three (V3)

V3 launched in August 2007. Submission limits were eliminated, allowing each user to submit an unlimited number of updates and new entries. New releases added to the database were explicitly marked as "Unmoderated" with a top banner, and updates to existing items, such as releases, artists, or labels, were not shown (or available to search engines or casual visitors) until they were approved by the moderators.[19]

Version Four (V4)

This system launched on 10 March 2008. New submissions and edits currently take effect immediately. Any time a new release is added or old release edited, that entry becomes flagged as needing "votes" (initially, "review," but this term caused confusion). A flagged entry is marked as a full yellow bar across a release in the list views and, like version three, a banner on the submission itself – although, initially, this banner was omitted.

Any item can be voted on at any time, even if it isn't flagged. Votes consist of a rating of the correctness & completeness of the full set of data for an item (not just the most recent changes), as assessed by users who have been automatically determined, by an undisclosed algorithm, to be experienced & reliable enough to be allowed to cast votes. An item's "average" vote is displayed with the item's data.[20]

The ranking system has also changed in v4. In v3, rank points were only awarded to submitters when a submission was "Accepted" by moderator votes. While in v4, rank points are now awarded immediately when a submission is made, regardless of the accuracy of the information and what votes it eventually receives, if any.[21]

Discogs-aware Meta-Data Software

Tag editors

Main article: Tag editor
  • ASMT MP3 Tagger – single release tagger
  • foobar2000 – freeware media player and music management software with a plugin
  • Helium Music Manager – music management software with a plugin
  • Jaikoz – shareware OS X/Windows/Linux spreadsheet-based tag editor
  • Mp3tag – freeware tag editor, batch and spreadsheet interfaces
  • OrangeCD Catalog – music management software
  • puddletag – a free and open source tag editor written for PyQt
  • Tagog – Linux audio file tagger
  • TagScanner[22] – freeware tag editor with Discogs, FreeDB, TrackType.org support
  • taghycardia[23] – freeware, automated MP3 tagger
  • TigoTago – spreadsheet-based tag editor
  • The GodFather – freeware tag editor
  • The Tagger – MP3 and AAC formats tag editor for OS X
  • Kid3 – open-source project, tagger for all common music formats

Other

  • MP3 Filenamer – online MP3 file name generator, based on Discogs release data
  • Discogs Bar – Discogs navigation and search control toolbar for Firefox
  • Album Art Downloader – Discogs cover art downloads
  • WWW::Discogs – Perl module for interfacing with the Discogs API
  • XLD (X Lossless Decoder) – a CD ripper and audio file converter for OS X

See also

References

  1. ^ "Discogs.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 23 October 2015.
  2. ^ a b "Explore on Discogs". Discogs. 31 March 2016. Retrieved 31 March 2016.
  3. ^ a b "Discogs Contributors". Discogs. 31 March 2016. Retrieved 31 March 2016. contributor#: 281,579
  4. ^ "DisCogs.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. 2016. Retrieved 9 February 2016.
  5. ^ Carnes, Richard (26 March 2010). "Discogs: Vinyl revolution". Resident Advisor. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  6. ^ "What/Why v2.0?". Discogs. Archived from the original on 22 June 2004. Retrieved 2 October 2008.
  7. ^ "Discogs". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on 29 June 2004. Retrieved 27 March 2013. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ "VinylHub". vinylhub.com.
  9. ^ "Filmogs". filmo.gs.
  10. ^ "Gearogs". gearogs.com.
  11. ^ Lewandowski, Kevin (August 2007). "Open Data + API". Discogs (Discogs News forum post). Retrieved 27 August 2007.
  12. ^ a b Lewandowski, Kevin (August 2007). "Discogs Data License". Discogs. Retrieved 27 August 2007.
  13. ^ Lewandowski, Kevin (August 2007). "Discogs API Documentation". Discogs. Retrieved 27 August 2007.
  14. ^ "Terms of service changes". Discogs (forum thread). 15 June 2005. Retrieved 27 August 2007.
  15. ^ "API v2.0". Discogs. 7 June 2011. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  16. ^ "API v2.0 Improvements". Discogs. 1 November 2011. Retrieved 15 March 2012.
  17. ^ "API Changes". Discogs. 1 January 2014. Retrieved 16 April 2014.
  18. ^ "API Changelog". Discogs. 24 June 2014. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  19. ^ "Discogs News - Discogs Version 3 - Part 1". Discogs. Retrieved 16 February 2011.
  20. ^ Lewandowski, Kevin (February 2008). "Restructuring of Moderation/Voting System". Discogs. Retrieved 17 March 2008.
  21. ^ Various (October 2008). "Fastest grown user". Discogs. Retrieved 29 August 2008.
  22. ^ Sergey Serkov. "TagScanner - Многофункциональный редактор тэгов" [Multi-tag editor]. XD Lab (in Russian).
  23. ^ "taghycardia - mp3 folders and tags normalizer". Tag Hycardia.

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