The BBC is currently working in partnership with Music Brainz - the
world’s largest public domain music database, which currently lists 8
million tracks by half a million different artists. The eventual goal
is to create and maintain an artist page for every performer whose
music is played on BBC radio and television. The front end for this
hugely ambitious project is already up and running at
bbc.co.uk/music although this is still officially only a beta version of the system.
The tracklist pages of all BBC music radio shows are currently being
upgraded. For every artist played there will soon be a clickable link
to their page on the
bbc.co.uk/music website. And the song information on these pages is all taken from the Music Brainz database. Here’s
an example.
However this means it’s now really important for independent artists
to get their recordings listed on Music Brainz. Otherwise whenever
you’re played on BBC radio the tracklisting will either point at an
empty page
like this one or else not point at anything at all (see the non-clickable entries on
this recent tracklist for Gideon Coe).
Unfortunately, entering data on the Music Brainz
website can be pretty daunting, so we’ve put
together
a step-by-step guide on our main BBC 6 Music Introducing page, to help artists do it for themselves.
Take a look, give it a try and let us know how you get on. Music Brainz is used not only by
the BBC but also by
Last.fm
and other music discovery sites - it’s going to be increasingly
important for artists to get their recordings and biog metadata
accurately listed there. If you can suggest improvements to our guide -
or have any other thoughts on the subject generally - we’d love to have
your comments…