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It's nearing the end of the year, and so that means another Album of the Year poll, this time for 2024!
How does it work? Select your top ten metal albums of the year; they have to be metal, they have to be new, original material, they have to be on MA, and they have to have been released in 2024. Put your list in order, with #1 being the album you liked the most. Once you're certain you have your list, send it to BastardHead by private message (pm) on the forum. You have until 12:00AM EST on January 1st, 2025 to submit your list to him - once the year changes, the polls are closed!
You get one ballot, and your account on MA must've been registered before November 30th, 2024 in order to participate. Please read the first post here for more details on how the poll works.
The results of the poll will (ideally) be ready by January 1st, 2025 or shortly thereafter. In the meantime, you can discuss the poll and your picks here.
Have fun, and look forward to your participation. \m/
Recently, there has been a noticeable uptick in the number of bands being submitted to the site which have AI generated music. We want to make it clear what our position is on these bands, and how we plan to move forward in assessing them.
It went without saying, at least up until now, that when we imagined growing the largest and most complete database of metal music, part of that vision was the preservation of art and human expression through music. Until AI, that was a given. The music described on the site is, in some way, played, programmed, and composed by a human being. That still remains an important criterion for us, and it is our belief that AI generated music does not satisfy that requirement.
With the above in mind, we won't be accepting bands with AI generated albums, and we will scrutinize more thoroughly submissions suspected of having AI generated music.
For those users submitting bands, if you have a band suspected of having AI generated music, we may call upon you to provide evidence to prove otherwise, whether it's behind-the-scenes material, statements from the band or its label, evidence the band played live, promotional material showing the band is genuine, and so on. The more evidence we have to show that such a band is real, and its music composed by a human being, the better. Our goal isn't to make this harder on you, or anyone for that matter, but we do want to stay true to our vision for the site.
This policy isn't perfect and is a work-in-progress which may evolve over time. We know there will be some bands with AI generated music mistakenly added to the site, and we also know mistakes can be made and bands without AI generated material may be flagged for having AI generated music. With your help, we hope to avoid this as much as possible.
Thank you. \m/
The results of the Album of the Year poll for 2023 are now available here.
Well, with December now upon us, it's time for the Album of the Year poll for 2023!
How does it work? Select your top ten metal albums of the year; they have to be metal, they have to be new, original material, they have to be on MA, and they have to have been released in 2023. Put your list in order, with #1 being the album you liked the most. Once you're certain you have your list, send it to BastardHead by private message (pm) on the forum. You have until 12:00AM EST on January 1st, 2024 to submit your list to him - once the year changes, the polls are closed!
You get one ballot, and your account on MA must've been registered before November 30th, 2023 in order to participate. Please read the first post here for more details on the way the poll works.
The results of the poll will (ideally) be announced on January 1st, 2024 or shortly thereafter. In the meantime, feel free to discuss the poll in the thread located here.
Have fun, and look forward to your participation. \m/
Greetings, all! It's almost that time of the year again - time for our classic reviews challenge!
This challenge is a time-honored tradition among our reviewers here. Every spring and autumn, reviewers are encouraged to spend a week writing and submitting as many quality reviews as possible. The challenge is focused on virgin albums: those with no reviews so far.
Every day, the reviews submitted and accepted are tallied, so that participants can see how they compare with one another and whether or not, altogether, we've been able to surpass previous challenges' totals. There's no prizes or rewards except knowing that you've given a review to an album that didn't previously have one. There's also bragging rights for the most reviews, if that matters to you. Please read this thread for the rules and to discuss the challenge!
The challenge is named in memory of our friend Diamhea, a long-time contributor to the challenge and staff member here at Metal Archives, who sadly passed away on May 21st, 2018. He was the first person to have ever written 100 reviews for a single challenge!
The challenge will start a week from now at 12:00AM EST on Monday November 27th and will run until 11:59PM EST on Sunday December 3rd.
Everyone is welcome to participate - all you have to do is submit reviews as usual during that week.
Looking forward to your participation! \m/
Harkening back to a news item from over 7 years ago, the band research thread now comes with a neat and shiny list in HTML table form. This list has already helped us tremendously in getting a better overview as well as resolving many entries from that gargantuan and ever-growing thread. If you know anything about any of the listed bands or you're just really into sleuthing work for old forgotten stuff, we'd be grateful for any help in thinning out the list and contributing to the Archives' completeness. Or who knows, maybe you are even so graciously inclined and willing to purchase a release in order to get our collective aural mitts on some crucial piece of music.
See the thread's opening post for more information. If you have any questions, requests or suggestions for the HTML list in particular, feel free to post in the thread or email me directly.
Cheers!
On March 31, 2023, a severe storm caused the roof to collapse on attendees at a metal gig in Belvidere, Illinois. One man was killed, while another 28 people were injured, including five with severe injuries.
If you would like to provide support, a GoFundMe has been set up for the family of the man who was killed, to help with the costs that come along with losing a family member:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/fred-livingston-jr
Donation pages were also created to help with financial relief for severely injured attendees:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/financial-relief-for-michelle-il-roof-collapse
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-paul-rojas-after-apollo-roof-collapse
https://www.gofundme.com/f/dylans-recover-from-the-apollo
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-metal-mark-apollo-theater-roof-collapse
https://www.gofundme.com/f/daniels-recovery-apollo-roof-collapse
https://www.gofundme.com/f/financial-relief-after-roof-collapse-for-victoria
https://www.gofundme.com/f/vmq5j6-medical-and-monthly-bills
If there are additional official donation pages, we will add them. Our thoughts are with the victims, their families, and all those affected by this tragedy. The metal community is here for you.
Hey gang,
I've got a couple bad news. Firstly, there is unfortunately no magic AI that will help us manage the band queue. That was just a bit of April Fools Day wishful thinking. Who knows, maybe one day!
Secondly, black metal will remain on the site.
Hello everyone,
There are some big changes coming to the way we do things here on MA. I'm sure most of you have noticed the recent rapid advances in AI technology, such as the amazing results that software like ChatGPT and Midjourney can produce. So we've begun to think, could something similar be used for the betterment of MA? One of our main jobs is of course to evaluate bands for inclusion on the site. This is a very time-consuming process, often leaves people dissatisfied (both mods and submitters), and while we do our utmost to reach an impartial consensus on our decisions, the human element means that there is always a degree of subjectivity involved. Would it be possible to use AI technology to develop an entirely unbiased and scientific way of determining if a band is metal?
As it turns out, yes. Yes, it is. We've spent the last couple months training an AI algorithm on hundreds and hundreds of songs of every genre and have ended up with a very solid model for predicting whether a band is metal or not to a high degree of accuracy. This means that in the near future, we will be able to evaluate band submissions completely objectively based on sound wave analysis and cold computer logic. For the moment, we will be using this AI model manually to double check the results, but we hope to eventually be able to simply let submitters give a Bandcamp or Spotify link, and the automated system will do the rest!
Now, there is one small issue. Algorithms like this create their own way of "thinking" about things, so to speak, and this can sometimes find patterns and details that escape human beings. As such, one very surprising result about metal subgenres came out of our experiments. See, if we throw, say, doom metal at the model, sure, that's fine. Death metal? No problem. Traditional heavy metal? Of course! It's even quite good at determining if the more borderline genres are predominantly metal or not. But... Black metal? It was quite a shocking discovery, but it does appear that when analyzed scientifically, it turns out that black metal isn't actually metal. I know! We were taken aback, too! We even spent a good amount of time redoing the tests while tweaking the parameters and such, but the results remained very consistent: scientifically speaking, black metal is false.
Now, what shall we do about this? Remove all black metal from the site? Well, it sounded crazy at first, but the more we thought about it... It might actually make sense. MA has always prided itself on its accuracy, and now that it can be scientifically proven that a good number of bands on here aren't metal, it stands to reason that they shouldn't be here at all. It's not completely unprecedented either, since there have been purges of some niche subgenres in the past, though on a much smaller scale. In the end, we think that the opportunity to be 100% consistent and objective in how we do things trumps the inconvenience. Besides, let's face it, I think deep down we all know that black "metal" has always been the worst subgenre. This move should also cut down on at least 70% of band-related drama on the site. Overall, I think we can consider this a win-win.
This is why, in the next few days, we will begin to remove BM bands from the site. This will be a gradual effort since every band needs to be evaluated again. Of course, many black metal bands also incorporate elements from the true metal genres in their sound, and these will be allowed to remain if they are determined to be predominantly metal. This way, you can at least rest assured that the better bands in the genre will stay on MA.
Thank you for your comprehension, and we hope this new technology and classification can usher in a new age of enlightenment for the metal community as a whole.
The end of the year is nearly upon us, which means it's time for the Album of the Year poll for 2022!
How does it work? Select your top ten metal albums of the year; they have to be metal, they have to be new, original material, they have to be on MA, and they have to have been released in 2022. Put your list in order, with #1 being the album you liked the most. Once you're certain you have your list, send it to BastardHead by private message (pm) on the forum. You have until 12:00AM EST on January 1st, 2023 to submit your list to him - once the year changes, the polls are closed!
You get one ballot, and your account on MA must've been registered before November 30th, 2022 in order to participate. Please read the first post here for more details on the way the poll works.
The results of the poll will (ideally) be announced on January 1st, 2023 or shortly thereafter. This news post will be updated with a link to the results when available. In the meantime, feel free to discuss the poll in the thread located here.
EDIT: Results can be found here!
Have fun, and look forward to your participation. \m/
It's here!
The store focuses largely on shirts, but we also have wall art/prints, flags, buttons, stickers and other cool stuff, and most items are fairly customizable. You can choose among the proposed items on the store homepage, or browse through the Collections or the menus to pick what you want. Make sure you select the right size/colours/options (back print or not, fabric, etc).
https://metalarchives.threadless.com/
30% of proceeds go towards the Eden Reforestation Projects, a non-profit that work in developing countries to combat deforestation, poverty, and climate change and rebuild biodiversity.
We hope you like what you see, and we thank you for your support.
- HellBlazer
&
20 years!
That's how long this site has been around. Do you feel old yet? Or are you among those of our users who were not even born then?
In early July of 2002, HellBlazer and I put this site online on the public Internet, but almost no one knew about it yet. With the help of a few friends (and some of their own friends), we went about to test the platform and started adding data, with the first band page being Amorphis, added on July 7th. Why Amorphis, we are often asked? I have no idea. I was probably listening to Elegy at the time or something. Or I looked around and saw an Amorphis CD lying around. Or maybe not, I honestly can't remember!
Then, on July 14th we bought the metal-archives.com domain name. Yes that's right, in the earliest, pre-launch days, the site ran on a... Tripod.co.uk URL, seeing as it was one of the rare web hosts that offered free PHP/MySQL hosting at the time. And a few days later - band addition records suggests this would be July 17th 2002 - one of our staff members decided to plug the site on a (sadly now defunct) public metal forum, and thus opened the floodgates. The contributions came pouring in quickly, the early “big push” needed towards building what quickly became the definitive heavy metal database on the Internet.
Never would I have imagined, two decades ago, that one day we would be hosting a staggering ~160k bands, or that there were even that many metal bands in existence. HellBlazer and I are constantly awed and humbled by the wealth of knowledge and information our community has gathered over the years, not to mention the wonderful attention to detail and work ethic of our tireless contributors and staff members. We could not have done it without you all, and we sincerely thank everyone who has contributed to this site, both in big and small ways.
Now, the 20 year anniversary of Metal Archiving ought to be celebrated and commemorated in some ways, and we do have some plans for that, which we will disclose shortly. Stay tuned…
For our users old and new, feel free to share your memories, anecdotes, thoughts, or other comments here or on social media.
Here’s to, I hope, several more decades!
You've probably noticed that on every band page we list the band's status. There are six options: active, on hold, split-up, unknown, changed name, and disputed. Typically, it's our policy that a band is listed as "active" unless proven otherwise (i.e. there's an official statement from the band saying that they're taking a break (thus, on hold), have changed their name (self-explanatory), or have decided to call it quits (and therefore split-up)). The "unknown" status is a placeholder, intended only to be used when there hasn't been activity from a band - even in the form of gigs and communication with fans - for a long time. The "disputed" status is for special cases involving band members claiming ownership of a band and deciding to take it in different directions - think Batushka or English Dogs.
When a band member dies, so long as there are other band members, and it's not just a solo project, do not change the band's status from "active". Wait until the band has made a statement about their plans before doing so. Just because a band member has died - even the frontman of the band - it does not necessarily mean the band is immediately over. The remaining band members may choose to keep playing, or take a break, or quit, but give them time to grieve and figure that out first. Sometimes a statement may never be given, but context is important, and we'll have a better sense of the band's status at a later point in time.
This is also true for other circumstances that might impact the lives of band members. Just because a band member may be charged with a crime and/or is incarcerated does not necessarily mean the band is automatically "on hold" or "split-up". The same is true if everyone but one person leaves a band; the band could remain active, you don't know unless the band says otherwise.
In any case, tl;dr: ideally, wait until the band makes a statement on its status before changing its status on MA.
Thank you. \m/
You know, every year I think nobody will be fooled by the joke, and yet... Some of you always provide some amusement. No, we're not really getting rid of genres, that would be really silly. Happy April Fools.
If you haven't been living under a rock for the past week, you probably already heard about the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces.
In these dark times, please consider donating to help with the situation over there. Every little bit can help!
- The UN's Ukraine Humanitarian Fund
- CARE's Ukraine Crisis Fund
- A whole slew of other charities, organized by area of interest
Based on what we keep seeing in the band queue, I'd like to remind our contributors that approving band submissions solely based on one digital (one-track) single release is still the exception rather than the norm. I know that a previous news post on the matter states that one single can be acceptable in certain contexts (ex. with such unusual length that one might as well call it an EP; in addition to other criteria such as cover art and downloadability being met), however as a rule of thumb and for the overwhelming majority of cases there should be at least two before we'll even begin to review the submission for any other requirements. This particularly holds true if the band is playing a borderline genre, since multiple singles can offer a better picture than one, even if it is comparably lengthy, although moderators may opt to reject a submission even so if the available music so far remains ambiguous.
Also, there is no 5-minute rule.
Wow, that little joke blew up, huh? Cool to see so many people enjoying the feline band pictures. So much so that our traffic more than doubled, and the server had a hard time keeping up. Sorry about the slowness!
Thanks to Black Metal Cats Twitter, sadanduseless.com, various cat pic subreddits, and many, many other random sources from Google Image Search for the material.
Happy April Fools to all, and by general demand, if you want to keep browsing MA with cats instead of humans... Now you can!
Here's a few items regarding some largely unrelated things we've noticed during the last year or so of working on the site and which either (to my knowledge) aren't explicitly addressed in the rules or may need an explicit refresher here. Nothing really major, but I feel they warrant some clarification regardless.
- As with logos, band picture collages should generally be avoided. Only use the most recent available photo. There are some exceptions, particularly for some of the bigger bands that have particularly lengthy careers under their belt, but these are rare and it's best to leave adding them up to moderator discretion.
- Please do not add digital releases that are being offered for clearly ridiculous prices. This is a common issue with Bandcamp in particular, with a lot of bands setting an album's price to (usually) 666 USD/€/etc. This appears to be a common way of encouraging people to buy the physical release instead, while still making something available for listening. Obviously, essentially nobody is going to pay these amounts and as such we do not consider such releases to be valid in any way, neither for submitting a band nor for addition as an album entry to an already listed page.
- Please, please, PLEASE do not use the "Add another version" function for "correcting" errors. Use the report function instead if you cannot edit the existing version yourself. We get way too many duplicates that way.
- If a label puts out a re-release of a band's work after they've split up, please do not put said label under the "Last known label" field. The same applies to posthumous releases of recorded, but hitherto unreleased material. The label field should only ever reflect whatever the band was signed to while still being active. Use "Unsigned/independent?" if they weren't signed to any label when they disbanded.
- The chronologically first release is always the parent version of a discography entry, barring perhaps a very few freak cases generally up to the staff to rule on. For instance, it doesn't matter if a band considers a later CD release to be the "official" release if a digital version has been available from their Bandcamp before that. If it came first, it is first.
- There seem to be some misunderstandings about how to properly use the "Formed in" and "Years active" fields. To clarify, "Formed in" should always reflect the year a band entry's name (or minor variations thereof that don't warrant their own entry) was first active under. It does not refer to when they may have formed under an earlier name (regardless of whether that incarnation is listed or not). We also do not differentiate between things such as when the idea for a band was first conceived and when they actually played their first show/rehearsal/etc. "Formed in" and the first year under the entry name under "Years active" should be identical in that regard. Also please do not add guesswork based on when a band's first release came out, only use explicit information.
- There is no need to add the current year to band or lineup ranges to represent "-present". Leave it blank and this will get filled in automatically (and otherwise the information inevitably becomes outdated).
- No US state postal abbreviations for locations, please, always spell them out. Not everyone knows these by heart. An exception to this is the label address field.
- The photo field is, surprisingly, only intended for actual band photos. Not album covers, not additional logos, not any other kind of band-related photo that does not show any band members. It's alright to leave it blank if there are no usable photos.
- Instrumental album versions should be added as child entries to the main releases, and not as separate entries or even separate listings. An "Instrumental" tag can be added to their version descriptions. Note that being an instrumental version doesn't automatically mean it can only be a version entry. It largely depends on the difference between the recordings. If we are just talking about the same source material being used, simply without the vocal track(s) (and maybe missing or adding a few other things), then it's a version. If something was completely or mostly re-recorded, a separate entry is required.
- There is no need to add redundant information to the version description. If a release is a CD, don't add "CD" to the VD field. If it's digital, don't add "download" or similar. These can all be covered with the format field.
- For external links, Spotify and Deezer should go in the "Official" section, while Amazon and iTunes should go in the "Official merchandise" section. Furthermore, please add Bandcamp links in the form of bandname.bandcamp.com as opposed to bandname.bandcamp.com/album/albumname.
Thanks for reading and happy/safe holidays!
Over the past few months, the staff has had another look at the site's policy in regard to what constitutes a valid digital release (specifically one needed for a band to be acceptable), attempting to further minimize the arguable special treatment of physical releases relative to digital ones. Some of you may already have noticed that certain requirements have seen some loosening again considering newly approved bands, in particular when it comes to digital singles and production quality in general. We would now like to make certain things explicitly clear in this news post, highlighting two major changes.
1) Streaming-only releases are now valid, if and only if they are available through an officially sanctioned reputable distributor. This most prominently includes Spotify, but also other big outlets such as Apple Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer. The list is not exhaustive and subject to expansion over time as we see fit. Youtube/Youtube Music is NOT acceptable, unless of course a download link is included in the video description. Additionally, streaming-only releases on music-promotional sites that normally/potentially do come with a download option are also not acceptable, i.e. SoundCloud, Bandcamp, ReverbNation, VKontakte, etc. Of course, downloadable releases from such sites are still valid; nothing has changed in that regard, but when it comes to streams, we want to stick to the more prominent, dedicated sites for now.
2) We have decided to become more inclusive concerning bands with only digital singles, as opposed to the previous, restrictive approach where only exceptional and multiple single releases would qualify for a select few cases. The basic requirements and guidelines are as follows:
- Ideally there should be multiple singles, although in the case of only one, moderator discretion can come into play considering things such as length, genre context and other factors.
- Unique cover art is still essentially a must. Other considerations can provide some leeway here, such as the number of singles and general presentation.
- Advance single previews/teasers for upcoming albums are not acceptable, and neither are a bunch of random song downloads on a band's website. Please be sensible in distinguishing these from actual autonomous single releases (again, unique cover art goes a long way towards making a case for an acceptable single, but it also depends on the way something is presented and promoted by the artist).
Updated sections for the rules covering these issues and more are in the works. Thank you.
Please don't upload logo collages (multiple logos in one image) to band pages. We will eventually support uploading multiple logos and pictures from different periods, but for now, just the most recent logo is enough (or the most recognizable/classic logo in the case of a split-up band).
Thanks.
As many of you likely already gathered one way or another, the site isn't going anywhere. Happy April Fools' Day!
However, the projects we linked to in the previous post are very much real and doing actual valuable work you can contribute to. If you elect to donate your computer's resources, we'd be happy to see you joining the official Metal Archives teams (#237115 on Folding@Home and simply "Metal Archives" on Rosetta@Home). Happy crunching! \m/
In light of the ongoing pandemic situation, the staff has decided to dedicate the site server's computational resources entirely to the Folding@Home and Rosetta@Home distributed computing projects for biomedical research, until such time as a cure/vaccine for COVID-19 is found. As a result, the site will be taken offline completely effective 24:00 EST today.
We understand that for those of you currently under quarantine or engaging in social distancing, Metal Archives is now more important than ever, but even so it is the unanimous opinion of the owners, admins and the moderator team that the priorities are clear here. We hope you can understand this decision, as it was not reached lightly.
Thank you for your continued support and we hope to be back as soon as possible. If you would like to help shorten the downtime, be sure to check here, here and here for more information. Stay metal, safe and healthy!
We've decided to make a change to the way we handle band appeals.
Up until now if you wanted us to review a band that has been rejected, deleted and/or blacklisted, you had to ask in a thread in our "Suggestions & Complaints" forum. While this method has served us well for the last decade, we realize that there's always room for improvement. As a result, we have decided to dedicate a whole forum, the "Band Appeals" forum, to handling these requests.
The way this new forum works is simple. Each band brought up gets its own thread (see our example thread). In that thread, people are free to (politely) make the case for why we should reverse our decision to reject/delete/blacklist that band. A moderator will respond with our new decision - whether to whitelist the band so it can be resubmitted, or to maintain the rejection/deletion/blacklisting of the band. Once a decision is rendered, it is FINAL until or if the band releases a new album, or new evidence comes up that shows it may qualify as acceptable under our rules. Threads will be flagged to show if the appeal has been approved, denied, or needs more information/evidence.
Before asking for an appeal, you are expected to do a search of the forums to see if the band has been previously brought up. You are also expected to read our guidelines for how to make an appeal and what evidence we would need for it. Please note that duplicate threads for bands that already have threads will be closed. Likewise, we ask each user to limit the appeals they bring up to no more than a few per week.
We hope this new system will make appeals easier and more streamlined for everyone. Please remember to thoroughly read our guidelines on it.
Thanks. \m/
Yes, as most of you have figured, we're not really going to start filtering bands based on their subjective quality... though many people seemed to actually be into the idea! We instead remain committed to documenting every metal band in an encyclopedic fashion, as always.
Thank you all for your reactions, it was entertaining as usual. Happy April Fools' Day.
Also, I must apologize for the taste in "good" metal of certain moderators. <_<
There will be a short downtime tonight around 1 am EST. Sorry about the inconvenience.
It turns out that there was a mix-up with the migration, and we need to go down for maintenance again. Possibly tonight at the same time, but I'm having trouble confirming this with our host (hence the late warning, sorry about that).
EDIT: Confirmed for midnight.
EDIT 2: Migration complete... for real!
The site will be migrating to a new server tonight at midnight EDT / 4 am UTC. There will be some downtime. We'll try to make the process as quick and smooth as possible.
EDIT: The migration is complete. Please report any problem you encounter to me.
Since we first started to allow digital-only artists on MA over five years ago, the staff has tried to abide by a number of guidelines that were designed to prevent the Archives from getting flooded with fleeting online projects that never put out any substantial releases. These guidelines were used because while the physical release rule has long served us well as a measuring stick of eligible bands, simply extending the general criteria of this approach to digital work comes with a number of issues; issues mainly stemming from the potentially ephemeral nature of internet releases and the relative ease of putting together an album compromising the original intent behind the physical release rule.
Out of the digital release guidelines, the most visible is almost definitely the length requirement. This requirement was intended as a rough point of orientation, as a more concrete representation of a "proper" and "serious" album that mods could consistently apply when faced with hundreds of new bands in the queue. As such it was also only one of a number of other attributes that seemed reasonable to expect from professional (enough) output. Over the years, however, the length requirement has taken on an undue amount of significance and has essentially become the primary benchmark for bands, in many cases undermining the "spirit" behind its conception. To make things worse, the "needed" length of a digital release has become a constant source of misunderstandings, inconsistent definitions and frustration, both amongst our userbase and staff-internally.
Over the past few months we have discussed this problem amongst the staff and the bottomline is this: The length aspect is going to be greatly deemphasised when it comes to eligible digital-only bands. In turn, we will endeavour to better assess a project's apparent level of dedication, professionalism and distribution effort by way of teamwork and discussion between mods. Ideally, as much as possible, if a band is acceptable with a physical release, it should be acceptable with a digital one as well.
The relevant rules section should be updated soon with more details and pointers to reflect this change in policy. Note that singles and rough demos are still (generally) not sufficient and that one of the foremost requirements for a release remains that there is a full download option for the everyday music explorer, i.e. no streams or downloads hidden behind walls of registration or other unreasonable hoops to jump through.
Thank you for your continued contributions.
- A number of users keep adding streaming-only digital releases. To reiterate, a digital album, in order to be listed in the discography section, must be or must have been available for full, public, official download at some point. Apparently this problem is particulary virulent for Bandzone streams. Again, please do not add streaming-only releases of any kind.
- Considering that with differing timezones there can be some ambiguity about the "already out" part of a release, in regards to bands eligible for submitting, we would like to make it explicit that for release dates, the site goes by "MA time" (i.e. Eastern Standard Time, i.e. what you see via all the timestamps on the site) to determine whether an album is released (and thus the band valid) or not.
- To clarify, for bands already listed, upcoming albums can be added with the usual caveats (cover art, full tracklist and confirmed release date), but for potential submissions, the eligible album's release date must align with "MA time". Not the band's timezone, not any other location on Earth. This may come across as somewhat fussy and doesn't make a difference in most cases, but with more visible and anticipated upcoming bands in particular, there can be a sort of run at the band queue, with technically premature submissions happening before midnight MA time. We would like to enforce a clear, uniform standard in the interest of fairness.
In short, only submit a band if the qualifying release is out according to MA time.
As always, thank you all for your contributions and comprehension.
If anyone would like to donate to help Diamhea's family with funeral costs and the like (see the previous post if you haven't heard the sad news), you can do so at the following address:
https://www.gofundme.com/ ceremony-for-chris
Every little bit helps. Thank you.