Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums

For singles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs.

For the notability guideline, see WP:NMG § Albums and songs.

Classical Music Portal

WikiProject Albums is an organization of Wikipedians dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of all kinds of musical albums. We seek ways of simplifying album pages so users can get the basic information fast, creating high-quality new pages, ensuring a standardized format and make articles as informative as possible. There is also a WikiProject Albums Featured Albums Project, which seeks to coordinate efforts to get as many albums as possible promoted to Featured status.

Feel free to ask questions on the talk page. Below is a basic guide to writing an article on a specific album of music; this is only a guide and you should feel free to personalize an article as you see fit, though others may change it to fit our standards.

Subpages

Album pages by quality
Quality
	Total
FA	170
FL	76
GA	1,563
B	1,689
C	9,604
Start	60,791
Stub	76,131
List	1,555
Category	47,864
Disambig	250
File	159,406
Project	198
Redirect	30,463
Template	714
NA	1
Draft	169
Assessed	390,644
Unassessed	4
Total	390,648
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 807,350			Ω = 5.38

• /Assessment
• /Certifications
• /Featured Albums Project

Project templates

• When you create or find a new album page, please add {{Album}} to the top of the talk page. The {{Album}} template has several optional parameters:
  • The parameter class adds the article to categories based on its assessment. Use stub, start, B, GA, A or FA. See /Assessment for details on these ratings and for importance.
  • If the page has no infobox, set needs-infobox to yes.
  • If the page needs immediate attention, answer yes, otherwise remove this line.
  • The parameter auto is for bots. Pay no attention to the bot behind the curtain.

{{Album
|class=
|importance=
|attention=
|needs-infobox=
|auto=
}}

• If the page has an incomplete infobox, note the missing details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Incomplete infobox.
• If the page has an old style infobox, add {{newinfobox|type=album}} to the top of the talk page, which adds the article to Category:Album articles needing infobox conversion.

Notability

While members of this project like to see new articles about albums, not all albums deserve articles at Wikipedia. Many consider any original studio album by a notable artist to be important enough to deserve an article, other editors follow stricter guidelines. See the following policies and policy proposals:

• Wikipedia:Notability (albums) (this is a historical, inactive guideline as of January 2007)
• Wikipedia:Notability (music)
• Wikipedia:Notability

Style

Naming

The article name should be the title of the album, disambiguated if necessary. Do not pre-emptively disambiguate! When there is no other encyclopedic use of the album title, the article should reside at the normal name, e.g. London Calling, not London Calling (album). In cases where disambiguation is needed, the term (EP) should be used for EPs, (video) for video albums and (album) for other albums, e.g. Insomniac (album) and Gas Food Lodging (EP). For multiple albums with the same title, use the artist name to distinguish the different albums, e.g. Down to Earth (Rainbow album) and Down to Earth (Ozzy Osbourne album). For artists who release multiple albums with the same name, disambiguate by year, e.g. Weezer (1994 album) and Weezer (2001 album) (unless the albums were released the same year, in which case they can be disambiguated by some commonly accepted convention).

If the album title does not use the Latin alphabet, the article name should be the transliterated form of the title using Latin characters. The title should appear in its original language in the opening line of the article. See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

Formatting

Songs and singles are placed in "quotation marks", album titles are italicized and artists are left alone, with punctuation outside quotation marks, for example,

The Beatles' songs "Taxman", "Eleanor Rigby" and "Love You To" are from their album Revolver.

Links should only be created to song articles that don't exist if you believe that the song most certainly deserves an article.

Capitalization

In titles of songs or albums, and band names, the standard rules in the English language are:

1. Always capitalize the first word and last word in the title.
2. Do not capitalize coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor), prepositions (to, over, in, for), articles (an, a, the), and the word to in infinitives shorter than five letters.
3. All other words are capitalized, including short verbs (Is, Are, Be, Do) and pronouns (Me, It, His).

Dating

Please try to add the year in parentheses after mentioning an album for the first time in an article or paragraph (unless the year is contained within the sentence) as in: "Nirvana's next album was the breakthrough classic Nevermind (1991)". Do not use piped links to "years in music" e.g. [[1991 in music|1991]], instead add (see 1991 in music) where you feel it is appropriate.

Do not describe uncertain dates by using the season name, eg "released in winter, 1995". This can be ambiguous as northern and southern-hemisphere seasons occur at opposite times of the year. Instead, use the most accurate date possible, such as "February 1995" or "early 1995", if a more precise date cannot be verified.

The date an album was leaked onto the Internet is usually not notable, unless it resulted in some other action that is notable, such as being directly responded to by the musical artist or their management, or the leak itself receiving broad media coverage.

Disambiguating links

When linking genres and other terms in the article, be sure it points to the appropriate music-related article and not a disambiguation page. For example, rock should point to rock music and not rock; alternative should point to alternative rock and not alternative, a disambiguation page. Use piped links if necessary. Other terms to look out for are: pop music, band (musical ensemble), LP (gramophone record) and several more.

For more style suggestions, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD.

Infobox

For singles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs.

For the notability guideline, see WP:NMG § Albums and songs.

Classical Music Portal

WikiProject Albums is an organization of Wikipedians dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of all kinds of musical albums. We seek ways of simplifying album pages so users can get the basic information fast, creating high-quality new pages, ensuring a standardized format and make articles as informative as possible. There is also a WikiProject Albums Featured Albums Project, which seeks to coordinate efforts to get as many albums as possible promoted to Featured status.

Feel free to ask questions on the talk page. Below is a basic guide to writing an article on a specific album of music; this is only a guide and you should feel free to personalize an article as you see fit, though others may change it to fit our standards.

Subpages

Album pages by quality
Quality
	Total
FA	170
FL	76
GA	1,563
B	1,689
C	9,604
Start	60,791
Stub	76,131
List	1,555
Category	47,864
Disambig	250
File	159,406
Project	198
Redirect	30,463
Template	714
NA	1
Draft	169
Assessed	390,644
Unassessed	4
Total	390,648
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 807,350			Ω = 5.38

• /Assessment
• /Certifications
• /Featured Albums Project

Project templates

• When you create or find a new album page, please add {{Album}} to the top of the talk page. The {{Album}} template has several optional parameters:
  • The parameter class adds the article to categories based on its assessment. Use stub, start, B, GA, A or FA. See /Assessment for details on these ratings and for importance.
  • If the page has no infobox, set needs-infobox to yes.
  • If the page needs immediate attention, answer yes, otherwise remove this line.
  • The parameter auto is for bots. Pay no attention to the bot behind the curtain.

{{Album
|class=
|importance=
|attention=
|needs-infobox=
|auto=
}}

• If the page has an incomplete infobox, note the missing details at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Incomplete infobox.
• If the page has an old style infobox, add {{newinfobox|type=album}} to the top of the talk page, which adds the article to Category:Album articles needing infobox conversion.

Notability

While members of this project like to see new articles about albums, not all albums deserve articles at Wikipedia. Many consider any original studio album by a notable artist to be important enough to deserve an article, other editors follow stricter guidelines. See the following policies and policy proposals:

• Wikipedia:Notability (albums) (this is a historical, inactive guideline as of January 2007)
• Wikipedia:Notability (music)
• Wikipedia:Notability

Style

Naming

The article name should be the title of the album, disambiguated if necessary. Do not pre-emptively disambiguate! When there is no other encyclopedic use of the album title, the article should reside at the normal name, e.g. London Calling, not London Calling (album). In cases where disambiguation is needed, the term (EP) should be used for EPs, (video) for video albums and (album) for other albums, e.g. Insomniac (album) and Gas Food Lodging (EP). For multiple albums with the same title, use the artist name to distinguish the different albums, e.g. Down to Earth (Rainbow album) and Down to Earth (Ozzy Osbourne album). For artists who release multiple albums with the same name, disambiguate by year, e.g. Weezer (1994 album) and Weezer (2001 album) (unless the albums were released the same year, in which case they can be disambiguated by some commonly accepted convention).

If the album title does not use the Latin alphabet, the article name should be the transliterated form of the title using Latin characters. The title should appear in its original language in the opening line of the article. See also: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

Formatting

Songs and singles are placed in "quotation marks", album titles are italicized and artists are left alone, with punctuation outside quotation marks, for example,

The Beatles' songs "Taxman", "Eleanor Rigby" and "Love You To" are from their album Revolver.

Links should only be created to song articles that don't exist if you believe that the song most certainly deserves an article.

Capitalization

In titles of songs or albums, and band names, the standard rules in the English language are:

1. Always capitalize the first word and last word in the title.
2. Do not capitalize coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor), prepositions (to, over, in, for), articles (an, a, the), and the word to in infinitives shorter than five letters.
3. All other words are capitalized, including short verbs (Is, Are, Be, Do) and pronouns (Me, It, His).

Dating

Please try to add the year in parentheses after mentioning an album for the first time in an article or paragraph (unless the year is contained within the sentence) as in: "Nirvana's next album was the breakthrough classic Nevermind (1991)". Do not use piped links to "years in music" e.g. [[1991 in music|1991]], instead add (see 1991 in music) where you feel it is appropriate.

Do not describe uncertain dates by using the season name, eg "released in winter, 1995". This can be ambiguous as northern and southern-hemisphere seasons occur at opposite times of the year. Instead, use the most accurate date possible, such as "February 1995" or "early 1995", if a more precise date cannot be verified.

The date an album was leaked onto the Internet is usually not notable, unless it resulted in some other action that is notable, such as being directly responded to by the musical artist or their management, or the leak itself receiving broad media coverage.

Disambiguating links

When linking genres and other terms in the article, be sure it points to the appropriate music-related article and not a disambiguation page. For example, rock should point to rock music and not rock; alternative should point to alternative rock and not alternative, a disambiguation page. Use piped links if necessary. Other terms to look out for are: pop music, band (musical ensemble), LP (gramophone record) and several more.

For more style suggestions, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD.

Infobox

Article body

Articles on albums should normally be about only one album, including possible reissues. These guidelines assume an article about one album is being written, and will need adjusting for articles about multiple albums, for example by shifting the heading nesting levels down one step.

Each article should begin with the album infobox (see above), followed by the lead section which should include basics such as title, artist, release date, record label, and a word or two about genre and critical reception.

Describe history, themes (musical or lyrical), a consideration of its specific influences, specific followers, where it fits in its genre and what leanings it may have toward others, reasons for the order of tracks (if any), etc. Also, synthesize the general critical reception of the album, being as detailed as possible. Be sure to note minority opinions as well, properly attributed (preferably with an external link). Also, any way the album affected the cultural consciousness of a society or culture.

There are various methods for writing album articles, but in the course of writing them two distinct styles of article (that are actually opposite ends of a spectrum) have emerged most prominently, either of which may be appropriate, depending on the album in question.

• Include a paragraph on each song, describing its critical reception and relevance to the article as a whole. This may be more appropriate for concept albums, however loose, or albums written by people known for their songwriting. See Ziggy Stardust or Aquemini for examples.
• Focus on the album as a whole, mentioning specific songs only inasmuch as one song provides an example of a topic of interest to the entire album. This may be more appropriate for albums that are largely musical, without lyrics to explain, such as much of progressive rock (e.g. Styx, Deep Purple, King Crimson), dance music (Donna Summer, Paul Oakenfold, 'N Sync) or other symphonic bands like Metallica. See Highway 61 Revisited or Violent Femmes for examples.

Add a paragraph or two on how the album fits in the development of music. What does it sound similar to? What inspired the artists? Who listened to this album, then started a band of their own and became famous ten years later?

For an example of featured articles, see 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and Enta da Stage by Black Moon.

For more detailed guidelines on writing music articles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD.

Track listing

A track listing should generally be formatted as a numbered list.

1. "Complete song title" (John Doe, Brian Smith) – 4:23
   • First verse: Name of rapper
   • Second verse: Name of rapper
   • Samples: Name of sample source (preferably, artist, song, album)
2. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kelly Kalamazoo) – 3:24
3. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kalamazoo, Smith, David Whitman) – 2:34

Track names should be in quotes in the track listing and in the rest of the article. A track that is a medley of multiple songs should be inside one set of quotes, like this: "Song 1/Song 2". Untitled tracks should be listed as Untitled (without quotes). If a track has an article of its own, the track name should link to that article.

Note the standard method of attributing songwriters—write (and link) the full name the first time it appears, and then just give the last name (unless the first initial is necessary to disambiguate it, as in the Gallagher brothers of Oasis). If all songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated at the top as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano." If several songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano, except where noted."

Track lengths should be included for each track. Use a spaced en dash (–) rather than a hyphen (-) as a dividing horizontal punctuation mark before the track length. (Note that they may both look the same in the edit box.) You can insert it from the special character list below the edit box (see Help:Special characters) or copy and paste it from here. You can also add it by writing – HTML entity to the edit box (like this "–") but this makes the code less readable. If you think that this is too difficult, you can still use a hyphen, and hope that someone is going to change it into a dash. This holds true both in "Track listing" and "Personnel" sections. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Dashes.

Particularly for hip hop albums, it is helpful to list which members of a group (or guests) rap on which verses as well as mentioning sampling sources. This can be done in a nested list, as in the example above. Using a table is recommended in more complicated situations (see Before These Crowded Streets for example). If a table is used, it should be formatted using class="wikitable", using column headings "#", "Title" and "Length" for the track number, the track title and the track length, respectively.

The track listing should be under a primary heading named "Track listing". If there are significantly different track listings for different editions, these can be listed under sub-headings. If the album was released primarily on CD and spans multiple discs, these should be listed separately under sub-headings named "Disc one", "Disc two" and so on. Albums originally released primarily on vinyl or cassette should similarly list the tracks of each side separately under sub-headings named "Side one" and "Side two".

Personnel

A personnel section should be included under a primary heading "Personnel" and should generally be formatted as an bulleted list of names and forms of participation, with en dashes between the two (see track listing section). The names should always be linked if an article exists. The forms of participation (for example instruments) should be written in lowercase, delimited by commas, and linked on the first occurrence only. Remember to pipe the links if needed, for example "percussion" to percussion instrument and "keyboard" to keyboard instrument.

• Johnny Poe – guitar
• Sally Morris – glockenspiel, guitar, organ, kazoo
• Mike Dee - producer

Certifications

An album's certification can be worked into the body of the article, or a table can be created if an album has achieved multiple certifications.

For more information and help on certifications, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Certifications.

Release history

Albums are often released on different dates, on different labels, and on different formats in different regions. This information can be included in a a table. Note that the infobox should only include the first release date and label.

Region	Date	Label	Format	Catalog
United Kingdom	November 22, 1968	Apple Records	mono double LP	PMC 7067-8
			stereo double LP	PCS 7067-8
United States	November 25, 1968	Apple, Capitol Records	double LP	SWBO 101
Worldwide reissue	July 20, 1987	Apple, Parlophone, EMI	double CD	CDP 7 46443-4 2
Japan	March 11, 1998	Toshiba-EMI	double CD	TOCP 51119-20
Japan	January 21, 2004	Toshiba-EMI	remastered LP	TOJP 60139-40

External links

Album articles may contain an external links section of links to relevant external resources about the album. Links to resources about the artist rather than the album do not need to be included here, as these should be linked from the artist's article instead. Links to individual reviews shouldn't be included here, but links to professional reviews can be included in the professional reviews section of the infobox. Appropriate links may include links to chords or lyrics for the tracks on the album. Note however that lyrics may be protected by copyright, and external resources that reprint lyrics may be violating that copyright, in which case they should not be linked.

Categories

For album articles, there are three "top-level" categories: Category:Albums by artist, Category:Albums by year and Category:Albums by genre. Each album page should be placed into two categories, Category:<Artist name> albums and Category:<year> albums, which should be sub-categories of the respective top-level category. For consistency, the artist name should be the same as the title of their article (in terms of punctuation, "&"/"and", use of "The", etc.).

For example, Reign in Blood by Slayer was released in 1986 so it has the categories Category:Slayer albums and Category:1986 albums. To add it to these categories, you would place the following code at the bottom of the article:

[[Category:Slayer albums]]
[[Category:1986 albums]]

Category:Slayer albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist, Category:American albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist nationality and Category:Thrash metal albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by genre. Category:1986 albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by year.

Previous discussions have formed the consensus that a category for an artist's albums should be created even if they have only released one album (irrespective of whether they are likely to release more in the future). Please ensure that every category you create belongs to at least one other category, otherwise, it cannot be navigated to and will be listed at Special:Uncategorizedcategories.

Be sure that the categories are sorted properly. Use the {{DEFAULTSORT:}} magic word to control the alphabetization on the category page. For example:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinks, The}}
[[Category:The Kinks albums]]
[[Category:1964 albums]]

Note that albums should be alphabetized using the first letter of the title, while artists should be alphabetized as last name, first name.

See also: Help:Category

Discography

There are no explicit guidelines on how to incorporate an album article in a discography. Of course, there are several ways how it can be done. In all cases, please keep the following hints in mind:

• sort the albums, e.g. ascending by date (since a discography is in some sense a chronology),
• if you use tables, use wikicode, to make the list easier to maintain.

A simple way to list albums could be:

• first album (year of release)
• second album (year of release)

Note that album titles should be in italics and only albums, not release years should be linked.

A different way using a table could be:

Title	Release date	Notes	Label
Firstname	1999-01-01	first studio album	Label name
Secondname	2000-01-01	another note	Label name

Most album covers are non-free images, and are not permitted in discographies (or any other gallery or list). See Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria #8 and Wikipedia:Non-free content#Acceptable_images for clarification of this policy.

For further examples, see Category:Discographies.

For current discussion about discography format, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians/Article guidelines § Discography section.

Work to be done

Are you looking for Project-related work to do? Here is a list of work that may need to be done.

WP:ALBUM category summary
Last updated 17:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC) [manual]
1. Needs attention	256
2. Unsorted stubs	0
3. Uncategorised	0
4. Uncategorized by artist	0
5. Needs infobox	113
6. Non-standard infoboxes	4
7. Needs a by-year category	0
8.Upcoming albums need checking	224
Maintenance lists
New articles found by bot	X

Participants

Everyone is welcome to join the project and contribute. Lists of members can be found in Category:WikiProject Albums members and this list.

To join the project, please add this userbox by adding {{User WikiProject Albums}} to your user page. You will automatically be added to the members category.

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Albums.

If you'd like to welcome new users with a message that is tailored to the project, please use the code {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/New welcome}} which will leave this message on their talk page.

Review sites

The following is a list of some websites with reviews or links to reviews that you can use in album infoboxes:

• Metacritic has no reviews but a list of most reviews from magazines (Rolling Stone, Q, Uncut, EW, etc.), websites (All Music Guide, PopMatters, Amazon.com, etc.) and newspapers (The Guardian, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, etc.), normalized on a common scale, including links to online full reviews or excerpts from paper reviews with date and page (all reviews normalized on a 0-100 scale). This is very practical for quickly finding a lot of online reviews (instead of having to manually look up all of the others below), and very practical for having a meta-link to provide about paper-only reviews. (Example of a big Metacritic page: [1] Example of an album article mixing links and meta-links: Furious Angels)
• Rolling Stone (5-star scale)
• PopMatters (no formal rating for reviews published before 2005; 10-point scale thereafter)
• All Music Guide (5-star scale - do not indicate the "Album Pick" designation)
• ARTISTdirect (5-star scale, plus mirror reviews from All Music Guide. If the review is a mirror, use the original instead.)
• Blender Magazine (5-star scale)
• Entertainment Weekly (grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• NME (10-point scale, at bottom of review)
• Pitchfork Media (10-point scale, precision to a tenth of a point)
• Alternative Press (5-point scale)
• Slant Magazine (5-star scale)
• Stylus Magazine (usually grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• Sputnikmusic (staff reviews only, 5-point scale)
• Buy.com has no reviews, but does have a "professional reviews" link on the left side of album pages, containing brief excerpts from reviews from magazines like Mojo and NME, which do not have searchable online databases, and also includes the date and page of the review.
• Robert Christgau (grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• Piero Scaruffi (10-point scale, not all artists have ratings)
• Canoe.ca (portal for Sun Media newspapers in Canada)
• iq451.com has no reviews but has clickable links to many reviews, some of which are professional

Non-professional reviews

As a matter of policy, reviews from these review sources are not considered professional, and should not be included in album infoboxes:

• Amazon.com
• Encyclopaedia Metallum
• Epinions
• Prog Archives
• Rate Your Music
• Sputnikmusic's non-staff reviews
• Ultimate Guitar Archive

Reviews and ratings which only summarize other reviews and ratings should not be included either:

• Metacritic
• Artistdirect's reviews from All Music Guide

Non-English reviews

As the number of reviews should be limited, and as languages other than English are not understood by a large number of readers, reviews in languages other than English should generally not be included unless the language is especially relevant to the album in question.

New articles

For a list of new articles found by AlexNewArtBot, see User:AlexNewArtBot/AlbumSearchResult.

See also

• Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable albums
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs
• Wikipedia:Record charts

The standard infobox for album articles is the {{Infobox album}} template. The box to the right is an example. You can look at the wikitext of this documentation page and copy-and-paste the markup to an article, replacing the information within the copy with info on the album you choose to write about.

The infobox code should be placed at the top of the article.

Code

Nirvana
Greatest hits album by Nirvana
Released	October 29, 2002 (2002-10-29)
Recorded	1988–1994
Genre	Grunge
Length	49:38
Label	DGC
Producer	Steve Albini Jack Endino Steve Fisk Scott Litt Butch Vig
Nirvana chronology
From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (1996) Nirvana (2002) With the Lights Out (2004)

Most articles should only need the following fields (for the full list of fields see § Advanced usage). Do not remove fields from this list when the value is unknown; in that case the values should be left blank. Please note that the field names are case-sensitive.

If this template is substituted, it will return a cleaned-up copy of itself (see Wikipedia:Substitution trick) with unnecessary parameters removed and deprecated parameters replaced. Parameter indentation will also automatically be fixed.

{{subst:Infobox album
| name       = 
| type       = 
| artist     = 
| cover      = 
| alt        = 
| released   = <!-- {{start date|||}} -->
| recorded   = <!-- Do not add unsourced recording dates/years -->
| venue      = 
| studio     = 
| genre      = <!-- Do not add unsourced genres -->
| length     = 
| label      = 
| producer   = 
| prev_title = 
| prev_year  = 
| next_title = 
| next_year  = 
}}

Details

Try to fill in as many of the details as you can. If some details are unknown, leave the section blank. Wikilink wherever appropriate, but make sure you check your links and disambiguate accordingly.

name

The album's title should be specified using text (not a logo), which will be automatically italicized.

type

The |type= field refers to the general type of album. Enter a code from the following chart. The type will appear with the appropriate color.

Code	Display
studio	Studio album by artist
demo	Demo album by artist
EP	EP by artist
single album	Single album by artist
live	Live album by artist
greatest	Greatest hits album by artist
remix	Remix album by artist
box	Box set by artist
compilation	Compilation album by artist
mixtape	Mixtape by artist
soundtrack	Soundtrack album by artist
film	Film score by artist
cast	Cast recording by artist
video	Video by artist
other	other by artist

cover

An image of the official front cover of the original version of the album (or a reissue, if no original cover can be found) should be included at cover. However, unless the album cover is represented by a free image, the cover art should not be included when the infobox is used in an article whose primary topic is not the album itself, such as a musician's biography of discography. Album cover artwork may be scanned, or downloaded from another site such as AllMusic or Amazon.com. Note that whether you scan one yourself or copy it from another site, when uploading an image, you must tag it properly and follow non-free content usage guidelines where they apply. Whenever possible, prefer a version without stickers (like Parental Advisory, "As seen on TV", etc.) to display the artwork as intended by the artist. If you cannot find a cover image, just leave this field blank.

• Upload a copy of the album cover (as a non-free image under fair use if necessary). The image will display in the infobox in its real size, capped by the value of the user's "Thumbnail size" parameter in their appearance preferences, or the default (currently 220px) for non logged-in readers or users who have not set a different preference. To satisfy non-free use criteria, the total number of pixels in the uploaded image for any non-free image (i.e. the width in px × the height in px) should not exceed 100,000 – square images should therefore not exceed 316px (300px is a common choice for square album covers).
• On the image description page, use the {{Non-free album cover}} image copyright tag if it is non-free. Selecting "Album or single cover" from the pulldown list on the image upload page will accomplish this.
• Add a detailed non-free use rationale for each use of the image if it is non-free. You can use the {{Non-free use rationale album cover}} template.
• Fill the template's |cover= field with the name of your file (the full image syntax is not needed here – just the file name with the extension).
• Remove the request-photo or request-image template from the talk page of the article.

If nothing is entered into this field, the article will be added to the tracking category Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover. The article will also be added to the category if one of the following values is used: ???, Nocover.png, nocover.png. Setting the field to the value blank will leave the cover area empty without categorizing the article into the above category. This is useful if the cover does not exist, for example the album was not released yet, or the cover cannot be added due to other limitations.

alt

Alt text for the album cover, for visually impaired readers. See WP:ALT.

released

Original album release date, formatted according to the Manual of Style for dates ("December 14, 2003" or "14 December 2003" depending on the article style, without the quotation marks). The {{start date}} template may be used here. If the day is unknown, indicate only month and year ("December 2003"); if the month is unknown indicate only the year ("2003"). Only the earliest known date that the album was released should be specified; later release dates (incl. re-issues) can be mentioned in a Release history section.

recorded

Enter the date(s) the album was recorded. When there are many dates, it is best to summarize, using the month or range of months (e.g., January–March 2022). For multiple entries, see Notes for details. Add the location of the recording in the |studio= or |venue= field.

studio

If the album was recorded in a recording studio, enter the name and location. Link the studio, but not well-known cities, states, or countries (see WP:OVERLINK). Remove "Studios" if it appears in the name – use [[Sound City Studios|Sound City]] rather than [[Sound City Studios]]. For multiple entries, see Notes for details. For "United States" and "United Kingdom", it is preferred that they be abbreviated "US" and "UK", but political subdivisions should never be (never "MA" for "Massachusetts", "ON" for "Ontario", etc.). See Notes for details.

venue

For live recordings, include the name of the venue (concert hall, stadium, etc.) and location. Link as appropriate. For "United States" and "United Kingdom", it is preferred that they be abbreviated "US" and "UK", but political subdivisions should never be (never "MA" for "Massachusetts", "ON" for "Ontario", etc.). See Notes for details.

genre

See also: WP:GWAR and WP:INFOBOXREF

The field should include the music genre(s) that best describes the album. It should come from a reliable source and also be stated and referenced in the body of the article; personal opinions or original research must not be included. Genres should be linked (piped linked where needed), for example, "Rock, pop" should link to rock music and pop music respectively. Note that most genres aren't proper nouns, and shouldn't be capitalized, but the first word in the list should be. For multiple entries, see Notes for details.

length

Enter the length of the album in minutes and seconds, even if it is longer than one hour. Use a colon to separate the two, such as 71:09; do not use "71 minutes and 9 seconds", 71' 9", 1:11:09, etc. A seconds value must be included; enter "71:00" if the album is timed to 71 minutes only.

Usually, only the length of the original album release should be entered. The timing of reissues or other releases, such as with bonus tracks, should be added to a "Releases" or similar section in the main body of the article, if noteworthy. For albums that are released with multiple track listings simultaneously, only list the most common length or that of the standard edition of the album. In the exceptional case when multiple entries are justified, use {{Duration}} for the second and subsequent lengths: {{Duration|71:09}} will produce "71:09". For multiple entries, use {{Plainlist}} (see the template documentation for details).

label

Only the record label that the album was originally released on should be specified. Where significantly different versions have been released (featuring alternative track listings) e.g. in the US vs UK, the later release date or record label should be mentioned in the article, for example in a Release history section. Drop words like "Records" from the end of the label's name (e.g. use [[Universal Records|Universal]] rather than [[Universal Records]]). For multiple entries, see Notes for details.

producer

Enter the name of the person(s) credited as the actual record producer(s). Do not include those listed as executive, co-, additional, vocal, etc., producers, unless a reliable source identifies their contribution as substantially the same as the main producers. These should be included in the article body or track listings rather than be listed here. For multiple entries, see Notes for details.

Professional reviews

Further information: Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Moving infobox reviews into article space

Formerly, a Reviews field was included in this template. Professional reviews may no longer be included in the infobox, but should be described in paragraph form in a "Reception" section. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Article body#Critical reception. The template {{Album ratings}} can be used to illustrate review scores in this section.

Chronology

This group of fields establishes a timeline of an artist's releases. In general, all albums and EPs should be placed in a single, chronological chain in order of release date (singles have a separate infobox, and thus a separate chain). Exceptions may be appropriate for artists with very complex discographies which may warrant more than one chain (for more information, see discussion). If the previous or next release has a Wikipedia article, link the title to the corresponding article. Take care to maintain the integrity of chains, so that when release "A" points to "B" as the next release, "B" points back to "A" as the previous release.

Wikipedia's date style guidelines recommend that years should not be linked within the chronology section. Cover images should not be included in the chronology, as that would not be non-free use.

No more than one album should be included in any of the three slots in the chronology. Some albums can be part of more than one chain, using an "additional chronologies" section. Albums released on the same day should be listed separately, ordered using the standard ordering of those albums, or alphabetically if no such standard exists.

|prev_title= and |prev_year= specify the previous album in the chain and its title. If the current album is the first album in a chain, this field should be blank.

|next_title= and |next_year= specify the next album in the chain and its title. If the current album is the last album in a chain, this field should be blank.

At least one of the title fields must have a value filled in for the chronology to display. If the year displayed for the current article's album is incorrect, then it can be specified manually using |year=.

Advanced usage

Together
Original LP cover
Studio album by Diana Ross & the Supremes and The Temptations
Released	September 23, 1969 (1969-09-23)
Recorded	1969
Genre	Pop, soul
Label	Motown
Producer	Frank Wilson, Smokey Robinson, Al Clevland, Terry Johnson, Tom Baird, Henry Cosby, Deke Richards
The Supremes chronology
Let the Sunshine In (1969) Together (1969) Cream of the Crop (1969)
The Temptations chronology
Puzzle People (1969) Together (1969) On Broadway (1969)
Alternative cover
The original American LP for Together has a cover which folds out to reveal a full illustration of The Supremes and The Temptations. The full artwork was also used for some international versions of the album without requiring the cover to be unfolded.
Singles from Together
"The Weight" "Why (Must We Fall in Love)"

In special situations, additional fields may be applicable. Unused fields may be either left blank or deleted.

{{subst:Infobox album
| italic_title = 
| name         = 
| type         = 
| longtype     = 
| artist       = 
| cover        = 
| border       = 
| alt          = 
| caption      = 
| released     = 
| recorded     = 
| venue        = 
| studio       = 
| genre        = 
| length       = 
| language     = <!-- Do not use for English albums by English-speaking artists -->
| label        = 
| director     = 
| producer     = 
| compiler     = 
| chronology   = 
| prev_title   = 
| prev_year    = 
| year         = 
| next_title   = 
| next_year    = 
| misc         = 
}}

italic_title

Per the Article titles policy, titles that are rendered in italics in running prose are also displayed in italics in the page title. By default, the infobox achieves this automatically for album articles. If the page title is not the album title, as when only a section is devoted to an album, and in unusual cases where the title would not be italicized in running prose, such as untitled Korn album, set this parameter to "no" to prevent the page title from being italicized. This will also omit italics in the infobox heading. Use |italic_title = no |name = {{yesitalic|name of album}} to get italics in the infobox heading but not the page title.

longtype

This field can be used if you wish to include information such as the title of the film that an album is the soundtrack to, or the name of the artist that a tribute album is in honor of. The text in this field appears between the type and the word "by".

border

Choosing "yes" here will insert a 1px grey border around the cover image. This is useful for instances where the image and the background will blend together.

caption

If the album has been issued with different front covers, which version the image refers to should be noted here.

language

This field should identify what language(s) are used in the lyrics of the album. Do not forget to disambiguate and pipe link when necessary. For example, if an album's lyrics are in English and French, you would use English, French. Do not use this field for albums entirely in the English language, by English-speaking artists.

director

This field is only applicable to video albums. The name of the director should be linked to the corresponding article. For multiple entries, see Notes for details.

compiler

This field is only applicable to compilation albums of any kind where the person or entity responsible for selecting the album's track listing is known. For multiple entries, see Notes for details.

chronology

This field can be used when the album belongs to an overall series that is not adequately described by the artist's name alone; in these situations, the text entered in this field replaces the artist name (from |artist=) that would normally be displayed preceding "chronology". Examples include series of compilation albums compiled by different people, and series of soundtracks (which are often "various artists" collections).

If |chronology= is blank, the first (English) letter of the artist name given in |artist= is automatically capitalized in the chronology header, so that band names starting with "The" appear as recommended in the Manual of Style. If the first letter of the artist's name is stylized in lower case, or if the first letter in the artist's name is not part of the English alphabet, enter the artist's name in |chronology= as you wish it to appear. For example:

• |artist=letlive. should use |chronology=letlive. for it to also appear there in lower case.
• |artist=Édith Piaf should use |chronology=Édith Piaf to prevent the letter "d" (the first English letter) from appearing in upper case.

misc

A number of templates exist that can be inserted in the misc field, including {{Extra album cover}}, {{Extra chronology}}, {{Singles}} and {{Audio sample}}. If you use any of these templates, don't forget to add a second set of closing brackets for the nested template. However, please ensure if you add additional non-free images, that the use complies with the non-free content criteria.

Template:Extra chronology

Additional chronologies are generally useful for split albums, collaborative albums, and series of albums.

{{Infobox album
...
| misc       = {{Extra chronology 
 | artist     = 
 | type       = 
 | prev_title = 
 | prev_year  = 
 | title      = 
 | year       = 
 | next_title = 
 | next_year  = 
 }}
}}

The artist field should be the artist that this additional chronology reflects, for example one of the artists on a split album. The type field should contain the same type as the rest of the infobox. The format of the other fields is the same as the standard chronology (see above).

Template:Extra album cover

If the album has been released with different album covers, they can be added to the infobox using this template. However, per WP:NFCC#3 use of non-free content is to be minimal, and not to be used if one item can convey equivalent significant information. An alternative cover that is significantly different from the original and is widely distributed and/or replaces the original has generally been held to pass this criterion. Also, an alternative cover that is the subject of specific (sourced) critical commentary passes the criteria for inclusion. Covers that are essentially similar, despite differences in colouring, poses, text, etc., should not be included.

{{Infobox album
...
| misc    = {{subst:Extra album cover
 | header  = 
 | type    = studio
 | cover   = 
 | border  = <!-- optional parameter, type "yes" here to add a 1px border to the cover image -->
 | alt     = 
 | caption = 
}}
}}

The caption field allows for an optional explanatory text. It should mention where that cover was used (int'l release, re-release, censored original, etc.). As with the {{Extra chronology}} template, the type field should contain the same type as the rest of the infobox.

Template:Singles

The {{Singles}} template may be used as a miscellaneous addition to the infobox providing concise information about songs on the album that were released as singles during the marketing and promotion of the album. Promotional activity for extremely popular albums may continue for a long time, and songs from the album may be released as singles a year or more after the album's initial release. For example, songs from the album Thriller were released as singles for more than a year after the release of the album, and such singles are considered to be from the album.

1. Do not add specialty- or limited-release singles, such as those supplied to radio stations and music publications, which are often marked as "Promo copy" or "Promotional".
2. Do not include singles that were added as bonus tracks on a re-release of an album.
3. For songs that appear on more than one album, list the song as a single only for the album(s) where the single was released as part of the marketing and promotion of that album. Examples:
   • If a song is originally released as a single during the marketing and promotion of an album on which it also appears, and is subsequently included on a compilation album, list the song as a single only for the original album and not for the compilation album.
   • If a song is originally released as an album track only, but is subsequently released as a single to promote the release of a compilation album, include the song as a single only for the compilation album.

For complex release scenarios where it may not be obvious that a single was released as part of the marketing and promotion of the album on which it appears, seek consensus on the talk page for the album.

The output includes the name of the single and its release date, and the list should be in sequence by release date. You may list up to twelve (12) singles per album. This infobox should be placed in the "Misc" field as shown below, using the field cases also shown below. Any unused fields may be left out. Further usage information can be found on the template page.

{{Infobox album
...
| misc       = {{Singles
 | name        = 
 | type        = 
 | single1     = 
 | single1date = 
 | single2     = 
 | single2date = 
 | single3     = 
 | single3date = 
 | single4     = 
 | single4date = 
 }}
}}

name

The name of the album.

type

The album type (as specified above in the section "Type").

single#

The name of the single. Should be wikilinked to the single's article, if applicable.

single#date

The date of single release. Should be entered in wikidate format. If the full date is unknown, just use "Month Year" or "Year". Do not use the {{start date}} template in this field.

Note that all fields are already properly formatted, so italics or quotation marks need not be entered in fields.

Notes

Microformats

The HTML mark-up produced by this template includes an hCalendar microformat that makes event details readily parsable by computer programs. This aids tasks such as the cataloguing of articles and maintenance of databases. For more information about the use of microformats on Wikipedia, please visit the Microformat WikiProject.

Classes used

The HTML classes of this microformat include:

• attendee
• contact
• description
• dtend
• dtstart
• location
• organiser
• summary
• url
• vevent

Please do not rename or remove these classes
nor collapse nested elements which use them.

---

The HTML mark-up produced by this template includes an hAudio microformat that makes an audio recording's details readily parsable by computer programs. This aids tasks such as the cataloguing of articles and maintenance of databases. For more information about the use of microformats on Wikipedia, please visit the Microformat WikiProject.

Subtemplates

Date-of-publication ("published") information will only be included in the microformat if {{start date}} (or, where appropriate, {{start date and age}}) is used in a parent infobox/template. Do not, however, use {{start date}} or {{start date and age}} if a date before 1583 CE is involved.

Use {{duration}} to specify the duration/length of a recording. For instance, if the recording's duration is 3 minutes 45 seconds, use {{duration|m=3|s=45}} (which appears as: 3:45). If needed, |h= may be included to specify a number of hours.

Please do not remove instances of these subtemplates.

Classes used

The HTML classes of this microformat include:

• haudio
• fn
• album
• description
• category
• contributor
• duration
• h
• item
• min
• photo
• position
• price
• published
• s

Please do not rename or remove these classes
nor collapse nested elements which use them.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:WikiProject Albums in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for WikiProject Albums

The standard infobox for album articles.

Template parameters

This template has custom formatting.

Parameter		Description	Type	Status
Italic title	italic_title	By default the infobox causes the page title to be in italics. Set this to 'no' to leave the page title in normal style. Suggested values no	Line	optional
Name	name	Name of the album. Example Nirvana	String	required
Type	type	One of: 'studio', 'demo', 'ep', 'live', 'greatest' (for greatest hits), 'remix', 'box' (for box sets), 'compilation', 'mixtape', 'soundtrack', 'film', 'cast', 'video', 'other'. Determines the colour used for the infobox. Suggested values studio EP live compilation demo soundtrack video other single album greatest remix box mixtape film cast Example greatest	String	suggested
Longtype	longtype	Can be used if you wish to include information such as the title of the film that an album is the soundtrack to, or the name of the artist that a tribute album is in honor of.	String	optional
Artist	artist	Name of the artist; should be linked. Example [[Nirvana (band)|Nirvana]]	String	required
Cover	cover image	An image of the official front cover of the original version of the album. The image should normally have a {{Non-free album cover}} image copyright tag and rationale on the image description page. Example Nirvana album cover.svg	File	suggested
Border	border	Setting to 'yes' here will insert a 1px grey border around the cover image. Suggested values yes Example yes	Line	optional
Alt	alt	Text describing the album cover for visually-impaired readers. Example Black square with the gray word "NIRVANA" in the center	String	optional
Caption	caption	If the album has been issued with different front covers, which version the image refers to should be noted here.	String	optional
Released (date)	released	Original album release date. e.g. 'December 14, 2003' or '14 December 2003' depending on the article style. Example {{Start date|2002|10|29}}	String	suggested
Recorded (date)	recorded	Date when the album was recorded.	Date	optional
Venue	venue	Place where a live album was recorded.	String	optional
Studio	studio	Place where a studio album was recorded.	String	optional
Genre	genre	One or more music genres that the album reflects, delimited by a comma and linked to corresponding articles.	String	suggested
Length	length	The length of the album in minutes and seconds. Use Template:Duration. Example {{Duration|m=49|s=38}}	String	suggested
Language	language	Language or languages used in the lyrics of the album. Example French	String	optional
Label	label	The record label that the album was originally released on. Example [[DGC Records|DGC]]	String	suggested
Director	director	For video albums. The name of the director.	String	optional
Producer	producer	The name of the producer or producers. The names can be delimited by commas or {{flatlist}}. Example [[George Martin]]	String	optional
Compiler	compiler	Only for compilations. The person or entity responsible for selecting the album's track.	String	optional
Previous release title	prev_title	Title of the previous release in the artist's chronology. Link when appropriate. Example [[From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah]]	String	optional
Previous release year	prev_year	Year of the previous release in the artist's chronology. Example 1996	Date	optional
Year	year	Year the album was released. Usually not necessary; release date should be in the "release date" parameter Example 2002	Date	optional
Next release title	next_title	Title of the next release in the artist's chronology. Link when appropriate. Example [[With the Lights Out]]	String	optional
Next release year	next_year	Year of the next release in the artist's chronology. Example 2004	Date	optional
Chronology (artist)	chronology	Name used as heading for Chronology. Default is the artist's name.	String	optional
Misc	misc	Other details can include templates {{Extra chronology}}, {{Extra album cover}}, and {{Singles}}.	String	optional

Tracking categories

• Category:Album articles lacking alt text for covers (154,209)
• Category:Album articles with non-standard infoboxes (1)
• Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover (15)
• Category:Articles with hAudio microformats (239,381)
• Category:Music infoboxes with malformed table placement (0)
• Category:Music infoboxes with Module:String errors (5)
• Category:Music infoboxes with unknown value for type (4)
• Category:Pages using infobox chronology parameters with plainlists (3)
• Category:Pages using infobox album with empty type parameter (0)
• Category:Pages using infobox album with unknown parameters (1)
• Category:Song articles needing single infobox conversion (0)

See also

• {{Infobox song}}

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Infobox Album/doc. (edit | history)

Article body

Articles on albums should normally be about only one album, including possible reissues. These guidelines assume an article about one album is being written, and will need adjusting for articles about multiple albums, for example by shifting the heading nesting levels down one step.

Each article should begin with the album infobox (see above), followed by the lead section which should include basics such as title, artist, release date, record label, and a word or two about genre and critical reception.

Describe history, themes (musical or lyrical), a consideration of its specific influences, specific followers, where it fits in its genre and what leanings it may have toward others, reasons for the order of tracks (if any), etc. Also, synthesize the general critical reception of the album, being as detailed as possible. Be sure to note minority opinions as well, properly attributed (preferably with an external link). Also, any way the album affected the cultural consciousness of a society or culture.

There are various methods for writing album articles, but in the course of writing them two distinct styles of article (that are actually opposite ends of a spectrum) have emerged most prominently, either of which may be appropriate, depending on the album in question.

• Include a paragraph on each song, describing its critical reception and relevance to the article as a whole. This may be more appropriate for concept albums, however loose, or albums written by people known for their songwriting. See Ziggy Stardust or Aquemini for examples.
• Focus on the album as a whole, mentioning specific songs only inasmuch as one song provides an example of a topic of interest to the entire album. This may be more appropriate for albums that are largely musical, without lyrics to explain, such as much of progressive rock (e.g. Styx, Deep Purple, King Crimson), dance music (Donna Summer, Paul Oakenfold, 'N Sync) or other symphonic bands like Metallica. See Highway 61 Revisited or Violent Femmes for examples.

Add a paragraph or two on how the album fits in the development of music. What does it sound similar to? What inspired the artists? Who listened to this album, then started a band of their own and became famous ten years later?

For an example of featured articles, see 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and Enta da Stage by Black Moon.

For more detailed guidelines on writing music articles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Music/MUSTARD.

Track listing

A track listing should generally be formatted as a numbered list.

1. "Complete song title" (John Doe, Brian Smith) – 4:23
   • First verse: Name of rapper
   • Second verse: Name of rapper
   • Samples: Name of sample source (preferably, artist, song, album)
2. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kelly Kalamazoo) – 3:24
3. "Complete song title" (Doe, Kalamazoo, Smith, David Whitman) – 2:34

Track names should be in quotes in the track listing and in the rest of the article. A track that is a medley of multiple songs should be inside one set of quotes, like this: "Song 1/Song 2". Untitled tracks should be listed as Untitled (without quotes). If a track has an article of its own, the track name should link to that article.

Note the standard method of attributing songwriters—write (and link) the full name the first time it appears, and then just give the last name (unless the first initial is necessary to disambiguate it, as in the Gallagher brothers of Oasis). If all songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated at the top as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano." If several songs were written by the same person or team, this can be stated as "All songs were written by Gordon Gano, except where noted."

Track lengths should be included for each track. Use a spaced en dash (–) rather than a hyphen (-) as a dividing horizontal punctuation mark before the track length. (Note that they may both look the same in the edit box.) You can insert it from the special character list below the edit box (see Help:Special characters) or copy and paste it from here. You can also add it by writing – HTML entity to the edit box (like this "–") but this makes the code less readable. If you think that this is too difficult, you can still use a hyphen, and hope that someone is going to change it into a dash. This holds true both in "Track listing" and "Personnel" sections. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Dashes.

Particularly for hip hop albums, it is helpful to list which members of a group (or guests) rap on which verses as well as mentioning sampling sources. This can be done in a nested list, as in the example above. Using a table is recommended in more complicated situations (see Before These Crowded Streets for example). If a table is used, it should be formatted using class="wikitable", using column headings "#", "Title" and "Length" for the track number, the track title and the track length, respectively.

The track listing should be under a primary heading named "Track listing". If there are significantly different track listings for different editions, these can be listed under sub-headings. If the album was released primarily on CD and spans multiple discs, these should be listed separately under sub-headings named "Disc one", "Disc two" and so on. Albums originally released primarily on vinyl or cassette should similarly list the tracks of each side separately under sub-headings named "Side one" and "Side two".

Personnel

A personnel section should be included under a primary heading "Personnel" and should generally be formatted as an bulleted list of names and forms of participation, with en dashes between the two (see track listing section). The names should always be linked if an article exists. The forms of participation (for example instruments) should be written in lowercase, delimited by commas, and linked on the first occurrence only. Remember to pipe the links if needed, for example "percussion" to percussion instrument and "keyboard" to keyboard instrument.

• Johnny Poe – guitar
• Sally Morris – glockenspiel, guitar, organ, kazoo
• Mike Dee - producer

Certifications

An album's certification can be worked into the body of the article, or a table can be created if an album has achieved multiple certifications.

For more information and help on certifications, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Certifications.

Release history

Albums are often released on different dates, on different labels, and on different formats in different regions. This information can be included in a a table. Note that the infobox should only include the first release date and label.

Region	Date	Label	Format	Catalog
United Kingdom	November 22, 1968	Apple Records	mono double LP	PMC 7067-8
			stereo double LP	PCS 7067-8
United States	November 25, 1968	Apple, Capitol Records	double LP	SWBO 101
Worldwide reissue	July 20, 1987	Apple, Parlophone, EMI	double CD	CDP 7 46443-4 2
Japan	March 11, 1998	Toshiba-EMI	double CD	TOCP 51119-20
Japan	January 21, 2004	Toshiba-EMI	remastered LP	TOJP 60139-40

External links

Album articles may contain an external links section of links to relevant external resources about the album. Links to resources about the artist rather than the album do not need to be included here, as these should be linked from the artist's article instead. Links to individual reviews shouldn't be included here, but links to professional reviews can be included in the professional reviews section of the infobox. Appropriate links may include links to chords or lyrics for the tracks on the album. Note however that lyrics may be protected by copyright, and external resources that reprint lyrics may be violating that copyright, in which case they should not be linked.

Categories

For album articles, there are three "top-level" categories: Category:Albums by artist, Category:Albums by year and Category:Albums by genre. Each album page should be placed into two categories, Category:<Artist name> albums and Category:<year> albums, which should be sub-categories of the respective top-level category. For consistency, the artist name should be the same as the title of their article (in terms of punctuation, "&"/"and", use of "The", etc.).

For example, Reign in Blood by Slayer was released in 1986 so it has the categories Category:Slayer albums and Category:1986 albums. To add it to these categories, you would place the following code at the bottom of the article:

[[Category:Slayer albums]]
[[Category:1986 albums]]

Category:Slayer albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist, Category:American albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by artist nationality and Category:Thrash metal albums, which is a sub-category of Category:Albums by genre. Category:1986 albums is a sub-category of Category:Albums by year.

Previous discussions have formed the consensus that a category for an artist's albums should be created even if they have only released one album (irrespective of whether they are likely to release more in the future). Please ensure that every category you create belongs to at least one other category, otherwise, it cannot be navigated to and will be listed at Special:Uncategorizedcategories.

Be sure that the categories are sorted properly. Use the {{DEFAULTSORT:}} magic word to control the alphabetization on the category page. For example:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kinks, The}}
[[Category:The Kinks albums]]
[[Category:1964 albums]]

Note that albums should be alphabetized using the first letter of the title, while artists should be alphabetized as last name, first name.

See also: Help:Category

Discography

There are no explicit guidelines on how to incorporate an album article in a discography. Of course, there are several ways how it can be done. In all cases, please keep the following hints in mind:

• sort the albums, e.g. ascending by date (since a discography is in some sense a chronology),
• if you use tables, use wikicode, to make the list easier to maintain.

A simple way to list albums could be:

• first album (year of release)
• second album (year of release)

Note that album titles should be in italics and only albums, not release years should be linked.

A different way using a table could be:

Title	Release date	Notes	Label
Firstname	1999-01-01	first studio album	Label name
Secondname	2000-01-01	another note	Label name

Most album covers are non-free images, and are not permitted in discographies (or any other gallery or list). See Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria #8 and Wikipedia:Non-free content#Acceptable_images for clarification of this policy.

For further examples, see Category:Discographies.

For current discussion about discography format, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians/Article guidelines § Discography section.

Work to be done

Are you looking for Project-related work to do? Here is a list of work that may need to be done.

WP:ALBUM category summary
Last updated 17:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC) [manual]
1. Needs attention	256
2. Unsorted stubs	0
3. Uncategorised	0
4. Uncategorized by artist	0
5. Needs infobox	113
6. Non-standard infoboxes	4
7. Needs a by-year category	0
8.Upcoming albums need checking	224
Maintenance lists
New articles found by bot	X

Participants

Everyone is welcome to join the project and contribute. Lists of members can be found in Category:WikiProject Albums members and this list.

To join the project, please add this userbox by adding {{User WikiProject Albums}} to your user page. You will automatically be added to the members category.

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Albums.

If you'd like to welcome new users with a message that is tailored to the project, please use the code {{subst:Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/New welcome}} which will leave this message on their talk page.

Review sites

The following is a list of some websites with reviews or links to reviews that you can use in album infoboxes:

• Metacritic has no reviews but a list of most reviews from magazines (Rolling Stone, Q, Uncut, EW, etc.), websites (All Music Guide, PopMatters, Amazon.com, etc.) and newspapers (The Guardian, Village Voice, Los Angeles Times, etc.), normalized on a common scale, including links to online full reviews or excerpts from paper reviews with date and page (all reviews normalized on a 0-100 scale). This is very practical for quickly finding a lot of online reviews (instead of having to manually look up all of the others below), and very practical for having a meta-link to provide about paper-only reviews. (Example of a big Metacritic page: [2] Example of an album article mixing links and meta-links: Furious Angels)
• Rolling Stone (5-star scale)
• PopMatters (no formal rating for reviews published before 2005; 10-point scale thereafter)
• All Music Guide (5-star scale - do not indicate the "Album Pick" designation)
• ARTISTdirect (5-star scale, plus mirror reviews from All Music Guide. If the review is a mirror, use the original instead.)
• Blender Magazine (5-star scale)
• Entertainment Weekly (grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• NME (10-point scale, at bottom of review)
• Pitchfork Media (10-point scale, precision to a tenth of a point)
• Alternative Press (5-point scale)
• Slant Magazine (5-star scale)
• Stylus Magazine (usually grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• Sputnikmusic (staff reviews only, 5-point scale)
• Buy.com has no reviews, but does have a "professional reviews" link on the left side of album pages, containing brief excerpts from reviews from magazines like Mojo and NME, which do not have searchable online databases, and also includes the date and page of the review.
• Robert Christgau (grades on an A, B, C, D, F scale)
• Piero Scaruffi (10-point scale, not all artists have ratings)
• Canoe.ca (portal for Sun Media newspapers in Canada)
• iq451.com has no reviews but has clickable links to many reviews, some of which are professional

Non-professional reviews

As a matter of policy, reviews from these review sources are not considered professional, and should not be included in album infoboxes:

• Amazon.com
• Encyclopaedia Metallum
• Epinions
• Prog Archives
• Rate Your Music
• Sputnikmusic's non-staff reviews
• Ultimate Guitar Archive

Reviews and ratings which only summarize other reviews and ratings should not be included either:

• Metacritic
• Artistdirect's reviews from All Music Guide

Non-English reviews

As the number of reviews should be limited, and as languages other than English are not understood by a large number of readers, reviews in languages other than English should generally not be included unless the language is especially relevant to the album in question.

New articles

For a list of new articles found by AlexNewArtBot, see User:AlexNewArtBot/AlbumSearchResult.

See also

• Missing encyclopedic articles/List of notable albums
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs
• Wikipedia:Record charts