9 Artists
Artists are natural persons who compose music and lyrics, or perform live or on recorded fixations music.
Listen Local primarily focuses on recorded music, because it has far more and less valuable uses than live music. We organize music by the recording artist, because audiences are most likely to look for commercial recordings of music. In many popular music genres the performer is usually the composer, too, to emphasize the authenticity of the performance. In classical music and jazz, however, the composer plays a more important role, and in authentic folk music authorship is not recorded.
More about ► music&lyrics performer groups, ensembles, orchestras, collectives, ► bands.
| Features | Write-in | Opt-in |
|---|---|---|
| Artist name | We collect all used variations of the aritst name. Curator decides on canonical name in Listen Local applications. (Deus or dEUS?) Curator can overrule automatically collected data if we find unambigouity. | Artists (or representative) decides on canonical name. |
| Gender | Curators make a subjective decision if the person should be treated as female, male, non-binary, based on publiclly available information. We stress that this is a subjective opinion. In the case of historical persons, like Franz Liszt, this equals sex. Our automated collectors guess but curatos can overrule. | Artist chooses gender identification. |
| Nationality | Curators make a subjective decision based on publicly available information. | Artist chooses the most applicable nationality for professional reasons (GDPR) |
| Location_main | The main location of the artist, for example, Gent, Belgium. | Only confirming write-in information. |
| Language_main | The curators write in the main language of the artists. This is a subjective opinion. The Listen Local data collector apps guess this, but curators can overrule. | Artists state their main language of communication with the audience, primarily in recordings. |
| Language_only | “None”, or the language that the artist uses exclusivly in vocal music. (For example “English” or “Czech”). | Only confirming write-in information. |
| Born | Date (year) of birth from public sources, if available, only for natural persons. | Date of birth. |
| Location_start | A geographical location where the artist started to gather her/his fan base in the beginning of the career. | Only confirming write-in information. |
| Artist identifiers | Various artist identifiders, such as Spotify Artist ID, Music Brainz ID, etc. Currently curators record at least the Spotify Artist ID. | Verified social media IDs, IDs used for royalty management. |
| isNaturalPerson | Curator decides if the person is a solo artist. | Artist decides if he or she is a solo artists. |
| Features | Service |
|---|---|
| Artist name | We highlight potentially wrong artist names, or identical names of other artists that may make discovery and recommendation difficult. |
| Gender | To understand gender biases, or to design services for womxn, we must teach the algorithm the true gender of artists. (See coding for bands.) |
| Nationality | Imporant to understand various form of discrimination… |
| Location_main | NA |
| Language_main | In many genres where lyrics is important, the main genre is an important feature to find new audiences. For example, a Slovak language singer-songwriter may find it difficult to come across in Belgium. |
| Language_only | We need to place particular care on an artits’s work if the artist records both in Dutch and English, as different works of the artists may be suitable for different audiences. |
| Born | The age of solo artists is often important for finding audiences. Audiences usually identify with artits who are slightly more old then they are. |
| Location_start | Our Listan Local Apps try to help artists to find and maintain audience relationships. The early fans of an artists usually remain important throughout the artist career. |
| Artist identifiers | Our Listen Local Apps try to find many identifiers (English and national language Wikipedia URL, MusicBrainz, etc.), but curators and artists must verify them. |
| isNaturalPerson | GDPR applies to this person. |
9.1 Artist name
artist_id: The unique identifier of the artist in the Listen Local Database. Assigned by Reprex, the database manager.
artist_name: A name that the artist uses with correct spelling, for example, Katarzia.
artist_name_born: Katarína Kubošiová is the birth name of the artist known as Katarzia.
9.2 Biographies
isLiving: If the artist is a living person (GDPR applies), Y, N, M for missing information.
artist_date_birth: The date of birth of the artist in YYYY-MM-DD format.
artist_date_death: The date of birth of the artist in YYYY-MM-DD format, `` for living artists.
artist_date_birth_source: Any of the following: Wikipedia, Discogs, MusicBrainz, Artist for artists who opted-in in our database and allowed to publish this peace of information.
artist_date_birth_URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarzia
artist_place: The primary location we connect the artist to, if at all. For example, Katarzia can be connected to Nitra, Slovakia; Prague, Czechia (where she lives) or Slovakia. The choice is Slovakia, because her music is not specific to any towns in Slovakia but she sings in Slovak not Czech. This choice is made by the curator and can be overruled by the artist, if she opts in.
artist_place_birth: Nitra, Slovakia (Nitra, Czechoslovakia) will be implied from the date of birth, but we will use current place names and countries.
artist_place_birth_source: Any of the following: Wikidata,Discogs, MusicBrainz, URL, Artist for artists who opted-in in our database and allowed to publish this peace of information. In case URL is specified, please give a full URL, for example, to artist website.
sex_or_gender: Any of the following: Female, Male, Non-binary, Not specified, further categories may be introduced by a gender curator.
artist_gender_source: Any of the following: Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, URL (Discogs provides no gender information.) See for example Katarzia ~ Person on MusicBrainz.
9.3 Information sources
artist_discogs: The URI of the artist on Discogs, for example, 3581267 refers to https://www.discogs.com/artist/3581267
artist_wikipedia_en: The URI of the artist on the English version of Wikipedia, for example, Katarzia refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarzia (Katarína Kubošiová).
artist_wikipedia_sk: The URI of the artist on the Slovak, Katarzia_(pesni%C4%8Dk%C3%A1rka) refers to https://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katarzia_(pesni%C4%8Dk%C3%A1rka).
9.4 Artist on Platforms
artist_spotify_id: The Artist ID on Spotify, for example, 5EssQRYnIgCOcvPauVySR1 refers to Katarzia.
9.5 Artist’s Genre
Genre identification is a very important aspect in classifying music, and finding the right music for the right audience. We connect genre to artists, but the genre field can be overruled by individual songs.
Because people living in different places of the world, using different natural languages, and having different forms and levels of music education use genre vocabulary differently (jazz may have a slightly different meaning in Slovakia and Japan, among old and young people), genre definition is always specific for the use.
For example, the Spotify genre definition is specifically applicable to placing the music on playlists and personalized recommendation to the right audience within the Spotify streaming service.
An important value added service for artists and managers can be the proper management of genre information, which helps placing the music on radio, in-store, curated and personalized playlists, bring the artist to the attention of the right music journalist and bloggers, etc.
| Features | Write-in | Opt-in |
|---|---|---|
| Genre_self_identification | If known, we Listen Local records it. | Artist decides. |
| Genre_curator_identification | Genre by curator. | Artist cannot overrule. |
| Genre_spotify | Genre on Spotify. | Artist cannot overrule. |
| Genre_listen_local | Genre identified by the ‘Bandcamp Librarian’ of Boti Vitos. | Artist cannot overrule. |
9.6 Biography
Biographical information is very important in placing artist and their music. YouTube and Spotify scrape much biographical besides collecting it from the distributor of the music. Artists who do not have reliable, well structured, machine readable biographies are at a serious disadvantage to be discovered by algorithms.
| Features | Write-in | Opt-in |
|---|---|---|
| Ethnicity | Inferred from ethnicity but can be overruled by curator (as a subjective features.) | Artist chooses ethnic identification (GDPR) |
| Race | <We will decide on this later, if we have a suitable specialized curator.> | Artist chooses race identification (GDPR) |
| Died | Date (year) of death for deceised artists. | We have only limited opt-in and opt-out for heirs of deceased artists. |
| Biography_MusicBrainz | URI of the open-source MusicBrainz biography, if exists. (Verified by curator.) | URI of the open-source MusicBrainz biography, verified by the artist. |
| Biography_Wikipedia_EN | URI of the English version Wikipedia article of the artist, if exists. (Verified by curator.) | URI of the English version Wikipedia article. |
| Biography_Wikipedia_SK | URI of the Slovak version Wikipedia article of the artist, if exists (Verified by the Slovak curator.) | URI of the Slovak version Wikipedia |
| Biography_Spotify | Biographical information on the Spotify streaming platform. | Artist (manager) can correct it. |
| Features | Service |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity | To understand ethnic biases, or to design services for small country artists, ethnic minority artists, we have to teach the algorithms who belongs to these gropus. |
| Race | To understand gender biases, or to design services for womxn, we must teach the algorithm the true gender of artists. (See coding for bands.) |
| Died | Important to find sutaiable audiences, together with Born, Location_Main, etc. |
| Biography_MusicBrainz | MusicBrainz is an open source artist database, including biographies. We use it as a data source. We will help artists to place here well-formatted English language biographies, because this helps streaming services to find the proper audience for them. |
| Biography_Wikipedia_EN | We use Wikipedia as an automated data source. We help artists and managers to correct mistakes or add information. |
| Biography_Wikipedia_SK | We check the consistency of English and other language Wikipedia articles. |
| Biography_Spotify | We make suggestions for improvements for the artist for better discovery. |
9.7 Career
| Features | Write-in | Opt-in |
|---|---|---|
| Release_start | First commercial release date (year) if known. | Only confirming write-in information. |
| Performance_start | First (paid) live performance, if knowns. | Only confirming write-in information. |
| Composition_start | First registered music work (or lyrics.) | Only confirming write-in information. |
| Features | Service |
|---|---|
| Release_start | Our research shows that recording career lengths and frequency is an important variable in artist revenues. |
| Performance_start | The length and frequency of the live performing career is an important predictor of recorded succes. |
| Composition_start | The length and frequency of the composing career is an important factor of artist income. With the career milestone information we can give the artist quantiative and actionable career advice. |