Is Facebook event of a CD release party considered a valid source of acceptance?

No, unless it contains photo evidence of a physical release and evidence of legitimate distribution. In case of digital releases, we need to see where it can be downloaded in lossless format in order to accept the submission.

Thanks Midnightwards666

Maybe it's a mistake, but I was surprised to see an album deleted when it was added three days before someone else (even more surprisingly) added the same one, when I'd figure the last one added would be deleted, like with band submissions. Not that it's a huge thing if it's not a mistake, but adding stuff takes time, especially on a tablet.

https://www.metal-archives.com/history/ ... lter/disco

2020-04-14 12:12:40
2020-04-17 13:07:46
2020-04-18 13:58:49

Hello my dear mods, an acquaintance of mine asked me if it was valid and allowed to add a compilation of metal bands on Metallum, that was only officially released for YouTube, but not physically and not on digital platforms such as Bandcamp, Spotify, Itunes, Amazon, Googleplay, etc. Thanks!

Stream-only is never accepted.

Also compilations with more than 6 bands are not allowed (and in fact can't even be added iirc)

I already let him know.

So I was going through the report queue, and stumbled upon this one: https://www.metal-archives.com/report/view/id/711472

Basically there was some guy named "Jaymz" that was credited as the drummer on that reported album, but the reporter provided valid proof that the actual drummer was a certain Steve Halloran. So I removed Jaymz and added Steve Halloran to the album lineup, but now there are two drummers listed on the band's lineup tab. I asked the reporter if he knew anything about Jaymz, but apparently he doesn't: https://www.metal-archives.com/report/v ... 5/show/all

It seems unlikely that there's any info left on the band on the internet (although I haven't looked yet). So my question is, if no information on Jaymz turns up, can he be removed from the band lineup?

Album line-ups are often different to band line-ups. I wouldn't remove him just yet - he was added by a trustworthy user and later had his role modified by another knight... maybe Antioch knows something, although the modification was in 2017. Moving him to a past member seems reasonable for now.

Alright, just moved him to past members for the time being.

I have the CD, so I'm sure I edited it according to the booklet. It's probably a different booklet, though, because I have "Soul Shattered" whereas the one reporting has "Death on Call". I could try and dig it up, but no promises. Everything is in boxes at the moment... it's been hectic for the last couple of months.

Originally posted on Discord back on 5/15, kinda got overlooked.

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/F ... ers/846279
So, this EP. This was released on 5/4 originally as "---" with a different cover (black square) and missing the last track. At some point after they changed the name to Covers and added a song. Should I put this in the notes, or add it as a new version? I don't know when they changed it, but I found this in the page source of https://fukpig.bandcamp.com/album/covers:
"mod_date":"10 May 2020 11:07:13 GMT"
Gelordum's edit seems to support a 5/10 (at least in the US change date) update as his are dated "2020-05-09 07:50:27" for me, and being in Ukraine it was likely 5/10 for him

Is "various" a valid and allowed lyrical theme? That's quite imprecise to me and says absolutely nothing about a band's lyrical theme imho

It's not forbidden, but it's less than ideal and heavily discouraged. Such an ambiguous theme should only be used in cases where the themes vary dramatically between every song.

Very ambiguous indeed. Thanks for the clarification!

We discussed the matter yesterday in the staff chat and it's not something we want. Most bands can easily be classified with 3 to 5 themes each, just pick the most important ones.

I agree with that. I only asked because there are a bunch of bands with this kind of lyrical themes and maybe could be worth checking whether it should kept as is it or not. Most of these bands do have other lyrical themes listed, so "various" could be deleted without losing any relevant information.

https://www.metal-archives.com/search/a ... ame=#bands

Also, a lot of those bands have like one or two releases so how varied could it possibly be?

How to add line ups for non listed bands that have splits with listed bands?

We don't list them at all currently.
For Collabs you can add members for both bands, but for splits that's not possible at the moment.

Hmm. Is it allowed to add the info in the additional notes? That may work.

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Ruination/10341

Just touching up pages from the random band link and came across these guys. Per a 2015 interview with the band's founder, the band is no longer active, had no plans to record or tour again, but they had never officially broken up. I left them as "Active" for now, but wanted to see if there was a better way to reflect their status on the band page.

Hmm, from what I can glean from Google Translate, it sounds like they're currently too busy with other commitments to consider getting back together any time in the near future, but they also don't entirely discount the possibility..."on hold" is a bit of a safer choice perhaps, but I don't think it's unreasonable at all to consider them split-up. They certainly don't seem to be active.

It's 100% valid to add Bandcamp as "version description" or it's a topic that is being discussed?

It is typically not, but do not go on a mass editing spree please.

I know this isn't a normal question here, but it's the only place I could think of. If a band offers their demo as a .rar download (MediaFire) from their own official site, and it's the only method of owning the release, does that meet our requirements for a digital release?

Yes, of course, as it's both band-sanctioned and clearly meant for public distribution. It's even mentioned as valid in the rules ("released and distributed albums only" -> "valid digital releases?" -> "official distribution"):

https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Svarttjern/96784
Stumbled over it just now. Weird to see the tnbm added under the logo. Is something like this seen as legit? Judging from the change log, it appears to be there for quite some time.

Regarding the lineup here, does anyone know what "Mute back-ups" might be referring to? I can't say I've ever seen that before.

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/F ... Womb/53297

The 300 limit for the queue really messes with people as several contributors will every now and then spend time on submissions for the same band. No limit wouldn't completely eliminate that, but significantly reduce its frequency, saving time and motivation for lots of people.

The tnbm doesn't seem to appear on any of the album covers, I'd just crop it out.



Not much coming up with a Google search here, and no samples of the music that are easily available (although I didn't look very hard, so it might be found on Soulseek or something). Unless someone knows more about this, this one may remain a mystery for a while.



Well, try and see things from us mods's perspective for a moment, too; there aren't many of us working the band queue at any one time, and listening to and evaluating so much music (often of less than stellar quality, to put it lightly) is both time-consuming and draining for us. It's already demotivating to see the queue fill up faster than we can evaluate bands; seeing it balloon to 500 or 1000 and remain there would be even worse. Sure, the situation for submitters may not be ideal, but at the end of the day we have to strike a balance and find what works best for both of us.

I wouldn't be surprised if this meant he was either gesticulating in the studio during recording or actually did some backing vocals, which didn't appear in the final mix.

If you google "muted backing vocals", you'll have some results.

Is it helpful or permissible to provide hyperlinks whenever possible in the additional notes section e.g https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/M ... nts/784759 (see additional notes) or is that type of update superfluous? I recall I think I used to do it regularly, but I’ve been out of the loop for a while.

Edit: Also, any reason why there are no lyrics for Obituary's Slowly We Rot full length?

I am a bit confused about what to consider a proper single to add to MA. Is any downloadable track released by the band considered a proper single? Including unmastered, rough mixes, promo tracks, covers...? Sometimes the band releases say 4 tracks individually before compiling them into one release. What to consider those? Also if a band released a couple of singles (1 track singles) individually, is it acceptable to add such band?