What website's the closest to EM for non-Metal music? I think the database is just amazing, and wish that other genres had their equivalents.

Closest thing you've got is ProgArchives, RYM, or Discogs. There have been attempts/rumblings about more directly MA inspired sites over the years but they've never really come to pass. Ex-Moderator Alhadis was working on the "Tome of Noise" project for many years as a sort of MA sister site for all of the more hardcore/grind/noise bands that didn't make the cut here, but he's long ago abandoned the project and moved on to other things completely unrelated to obsessively archiving info on obnoxious music (and, personally, I think the site would've been a flop anyway since he still planned on drawing distinctions on what was acceptable beyond the metal quotient so pretty much all of the metalcore/deathcore that got rejected here would've been rejected there as well, so it wouldn't have really ameliorated the concerns of people upset about bands being excluded here and would've just made the site The Stuff Alhadis Likes Archives). There was also a Hardcore Database formed entirely independently of MA, but it only lasted a month or two mostly because the owner bit off way more than he could chew and tried to make it a general news site as well. I think server costs destroyed him right out the gate but I could be wrong.

I'd love to see a more general punk version where all of the -core genres that are only half acceptable here could go along with all of the many subsects of punk rock as well, but I doubt it'll ever happen for a few reasons. The biggest one is that no genre besides metal has a fanbase so fervently dedicated to absurd pedantry. No punk fans are going to be obsessively cataloguing every obscure demo from Slovenia like the metal fans here are.

To add to what BastardHead said above, the other major sticking points for other similarly-minded sites tend to be related to timing, level of commitment, and (I think) an interest in cataloging the subject matter.

There's nothing that can be done about timing. Part of MA's success has a lot to do with when it started; back in 2002 the Internet was still just starting to grow in popularity and there wasn't really anything comparable to MA out there. If you were new to the Internet, and trying to look up metal bands it's likely that you would have found this place as one of your first hits, determined that it had some value, and realized that it was missing information that you could add. Nowadays, if you were to look up a metal band, you will find this place but you will probably also find many other websites with information. That's definitely true for pretty much any band of any genre now; we live in a period of time in the history of the Internet where there is information overload and hundreds of sites now repeat the same information. Any new site like MA would have to compete with all of that, including social media, too. And, I think it was easier to build a community back then when these types of sites were more novel. I'm not sure if that's the case anymore.

Then there's the question of commitment. MA is what it is because of the users who have and continue to contribute to it. In 17 years (damn time flies...) we've basically gone from a handful of users, mainly pulled from other communities, to a website that now has around 550,000 users of which (reportedly) almost 400,000 are active. In that time, too, the site has had 90 staff members (130 if you include the "knight" rank) and many hundreds if not thousands of what I would call "power users" (essentially the folks that have spent the most time updating the site on a daily basis). The reason MA is able to survive and grow is because of this support network of people that contribute to it -- and that took time. Any new site like MA would have to start at the beginning, and it may take many years - maybe 17 - to reach the level that MA is currently at. Add on the struggle that such a site would face in attracting contributors and setting itself apart from general competitors like Discogs and Wikipedia... it will be a challenge.

This also lends itself into the other, and last, sticking point. I think others have mentioned this in threads about this before, and admittedly it's anecdotal, but I would agree that metalheads are probably a little unique among music lovers in how they view their music. It's true for other genres too - especially, I'd say, classical music and niche styles of music - but we have a fascination with trying to catalog and compartmentalize our music. I don't know the reasons why. Maybe it's because a lot of us are nerds. It could be that we just love to collect things. Who knows... but on the whole, I would argue a site like MA feels natural for most people who are fans of metal music. It's possible the success of this site is tied deeply to this. Now, whether that's true for fans of other genres I'm not entirely certain. Would fans of punk be as driven to work on a site like this? Fans of rap? Fans of rock? No idea. Metalheads without question, however, seem to be.

None of what I said should discourage anyone from trying to create non-metal sites like MA, but these are challenges I suspect are the reason why it doesn't tend to be very successful nowadays.

I could see a Punk Archives kind of thing happen, but it would definitely take a lot of dedication and money to pull off. It would also take a very long time for it to get to the point where it approximates Metal-Archives.

I'm a little surprised there is not something like a rap archives honestly. That seems to be a genre at least on par with metal in terms of obsessive fandom.

For rap, there's Rap Music Guide (https://www.rapmusicguide.com/), which I've found to be pretty good in the limited time I've spent browsing. It's served its purpose for me a few times in the past.

There's also Jazz Music Archives (http://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/). I have no idea how good or useful it is, though, because I know nothing at all about jazz. In fact, I don't even know why I know of this site.

Prog Archives is such a mess of a website. It's so cluttered and is really a pain to browse. I've gone there a handful of times looking to venture into the world of prog rock, but I get so frustrated trying to navigate it that I usually just quit (although recently I discovered Far East Family Band, and that makes me happy). That said, it is still quite extensive, almost to a fault. This becomes especially clear when you get into the more metal bands on the website. It seems their philosophy for metal is essentially "If they have long songs, that's prog enough for us."

Derigen's points are all valid and good ones. But I cant help wondering if the punk fanbase had gotten their shit together back in the day (key words being, way back when) there couldn't have been something comparable on the internet today. That community was pretty passionate about their music and there are fanzines and clubs based around that scene that have endured for as long as punk has existed. It would just be a case of getting the contributers and the organization to get it compiled and up and running. And of course the endless discussion of what would qualify as punk vs metal vs just plain rock. Would (for example) Fallout Boy or New Found Glory be punk? Or the various metalcore and grind core bands? I can see there being a lot of those type of discussions. But either way, as mentioned above, I think it would be pretty hard to create a site like that today even if the demand was there.

A punk archives would be cool. It would be interesting to see if something like that would include pop-punk and emo bands as well. I guess at least there's always Discogs or Wikipedia to look up info on that kind of music. And yeah, I would also agree that most other genres besides metal, rap, and classical don't really have a fanbase that would be likely to be that dedicated to contributing to such a site. Not to say that fans of other genres aren't passionate about the music, they just seem to be a little less into the collecting and archiving aspect.

There's also the Spirit of Metal spinoff Spirit of Rock
https://www.spirit-of-rock.com/de/encyclopedia

Before the genius forums were shut down, it was pretty evident of the fervent rapdom, among others like wutang-corp. Another genre I have always suspected could have this kind of success is the electronic/dark electronic music, although the obsessees exist in splinter groups.

The very title of this thread had me believe this was an early April Fool's joke (non-Metal Metallum....YEAH RIGHT).

I would say Heavy Harmonies serves the same purpose for fans of AOR, 80s hair bands, and melodic hard rock that Encyclopedia Metallum does for metal fans.