First of all, I have idea if this is the right place to post this.

I got a second warning today, which pisses me off.
Honestly I have no idea anymore if the first warning was legit or not and I do not care for that, it's just the second.

This is your rule concerning adding links:



Now. A friend of mine re-released an cassette record.
It was first given away as a free download, but the band later gave permission to this label to (re)release it on tape.
People can download it, but some other people might want the physical copy.

Why am I not allowed to place the direct link to the label's website?
I am following one of your rules, yet I seem not to, according to your admins.
I'm trying to support both the band of a friend and the label of a friend, but I'm not allowed to and getting (official) warnings instead.

I am sure you admins all can see about what I am talking about and that I do not need to put names or links here...
And I hope for a decent explaination and a rectify of the link and my warning...

The mods were correct to warn you.

The "Labels" section is typically for links which are for the band's official label(s); the rule is very clear to note that the label website must have a specific band-page for the band it is being linked to (eg. http://www.label.com/bandname). If the link simply goes to a label's front page, that does not qualify for the "Labels" section; that might be more appropriate for the "Official Merchandise" section (though we've generally frowned upon links which just function as a distro, and not as a band-specific distro). This one might be OK for that.

The key point out of all of this is that the link you give ought to go to a specific page on the label's website for the band.

You had already disregarded the first warning, though I hope it wasn't intentional so much as ignorance or a misunderstanding. But this is our policy, and while we don't always follow it to a "T", when we do bring it to your attention we would hope that you would follow it.

That's a strange policy to me..

I am a label owner myself (not this label) and I do not have a specific page for all of my bands or releases.
I just have a page called releases.
In that case, I am not allowed to put my link in the page on MA?
Or can I just put label.com/releases on it?

Though I agree with your policy I think you should change it for a more detailed one..
Now I have two warnings while thinking I was following your rules.

And you must agree with me that it's a bit misleading, because there are hundreds of links to record labels on MA, which clearly do not fit between these rules.
I think you should remove those as well, since it is not entirely clear to many users, what you mean by those rules.
I've looked at some mod's modification history and I see many of these people having this issue as well..

Eh, that sorta thing is discouraged but not entirely unacceptable. For more obscure bands with highly limited distribution, it's fine, but please don't go adding that for every common/well-known band whose releases you're stocking. That's part of the problem we've had in the past with label owners indiscriminately adding links to their distros - even if they don't actually stock the band's merch.

If being able to link to band merch from their page matters that much to you, maybe consider changing the hierarchy of the site to allow visitors to view band-related merch or info.


In the past (prior to April 2011), there were no pages for labels or band members... only for bands and albums. So we were left to add label-related links on band pages. Since V2, we now have a place for those labels (as well as artist-specific links too), so band links are meant to be band-related only. The label-only links you're seeing are vestigial of V1, and need to be culled. Report them if you see them.