2 Curators
Curators are the most important collaborators to make Listen Local human-centered and ethical. They manage the write-in database and ensure that the automated systems collect and store correct information about artists and their music. To maintain ongoing data ownership of artists, they manage the opt-in and opt-out procedures for artists.
Our music curators play an essential role in making sure that big data works for all, inlcuding self-released artists and independent labels. Their work facilitates the best human-human and human-computer interactions, and makes sure that machine learning algorithms do not learn from bad information, leading to bad recommendations, and unsuccessful artist placements and low valuation and appreciation for their music.
2.1 First steps as a curator
A curator can be a single person, or a group of persons. For example, members of a band can curate the local music of their town.
2.1.1 First playlist
Create a first, curated playlist on Spotify, and let our automated systems co-create your first dataset. Currently we build city/region/country specific playlists, with placing at least one song from a particular artist on a list.
Figure 2.1: Start a locally relevant playlist on Spotify
Why start with Spotify? Spotify has an open API, and Daniel manages the spotifyr open source API interface. Via Spotify, we can pre-populate your dataset with much high quality information.
Why only one song per artist? We automatically add every released song (on Spotify) from the artist to the database.
2.1.2 First Dataset
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.
More on how we work with ► artist and their data, including basic data, ► career (development) data, ► genre information to connect them better to new audiences and journalists, and why we work with their ► biographical information.
| 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. |
2.1.3 Your Intellectual Property
You will be the author of they playlist, and the main author of the dataset that will be used in various research projects and applications.
We will encourage you to write blogposts and articles about the music you curate on our Data & Lyrics blog which can be re-syndicated to any English language blog, or it can be localized to any languages you see fit.
2.1.4 Crowdsourcing information
We will create a simple, multi-language data collection form that you can publish in blogposts, social media, send to friends. The aim of the write-in source is that artists in the underground scene, fans, artists can recommend inclusions into the ► write-in database spontaneously, pending the periodic revision of the curators.
2.2 How to become a curator?
You can become a curator by invitation to the project, or by applying in a short letter.
Your simplified resumé and profile picture. Take a look at profile of Dominika Semaňáková, our first Listen Local curator. We will need the same information from you, and a profile picture that is at least 500px wide (jpg or png format.)
Links and Identifiers You can optionally attach to your profile your LinkedIn profile, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube channel, Spotify Creator account, or anything that you use as a music professional—select at least one where artists can get in touch with you. Furtherore, for contributions to this project, we will need the following three identifiers from you:
- ORCiD Your ORCiD ID, which will enable us to unambigously attribute your contribution to Listen Local. ORCiD is used in open science and other publishing to unambigously attribute copyrights to a person. It takes a few minutes to register an account if you do not have it yet. We will attribute your name and ORCiD ID on all assets that you contribute to.
- Github account ID Our project management dashboard and the FAQ is on Github, and all our source files will be versioned on Github. Github is the most popular open collaboration platform for open source software editors. If you do not write code, you will not contribute to our source files, but with a Github id you ask questions, take on tasks and report them ready on our project dashboard. All contributors will be added as a contributor to the dataobservatory-eu/listen-local-collaboration repository.
- Spotify Account Link: You must have a free or premium account on Spotify. We will ask playlists initially on Spotify for ease of collaboration. If you do not use Spotify, you can create a free account for your Listen Local contributions.
- Optional: to get help use keybase. Keybase is an open-source, privacy and security concerned alternative to Slack and similar chat-based collaboration tools.
You must abide the CONTRIBUTOR COVENANT CODE OF CONDUCT pledging to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation. (See translations and the Contributor Covenant FAQ.)
New curators
