FAQ
There is a red button in the header to the right which may say "Be a Propagandist!" or "Join!" or have just a red person icon, depending on your screen size:
or
or
Clicking on it will take you to the registration page.
- Provide an email address that will be used in communications,
- come up with a user name,
- add an avatar or picture,
- indicate whether you would like other users to be able to contact you (a process that is mediated through the site, meaning others will not know your email address),
- and then click on "Create new account"
An email will go out to the address you provided with a link in it that will help you set up your password, and that'll be it.
Once you are logged in, go to "My Account" in the top menu in the gray band below the header, on the right among the menu items in white (between "My Content" and "Log out"). Once you get to your profile page, click on the bluish "Edit" link on the left, above your name. There you can change your email address, user name, password, and your settings as a user.
There is a white button in the header to the right, the one in the middle, that says "Drop us a line". Clicking on it will take you to the contact page. On this page, you will see a bunch of options that identify the purpose of your contact. That helps us get in the right mindset when we see the message.
Give us any suggestions, ideas, criticism, reaction, whatever is in your mind that relates to the site that you would like us to know.
Go ahead. Don't be shy.
We are a really small group operating with a very little budget. Any financial help you can provide will give us the opportunity to put more time and effort into this site, do a more professional work in some areas, and provide a better service, from hardware to custom code to paying for the right kinds of APIs as needed.
To drop into the tip jar ("donate" sounds like we are a non-profit and your donation would be tax deductible, and neither is the case), you can click on the yellow button at the right side of the header, the leftmost button that says "Give to the cause". That will pop up a modal that has a PayPal widget and a Venmo QR. Those are the only platfoms we have set up thus far.
If you aren't using your phone, the Venmo QR will probably be useless, but if your browser connects your Venmo account to Paypal, a Venmo widget should also come up.
Thanks. Any amount will help and will be highly appreciated.
There is a row of "Agit-Prop" buttons right above the content area, on the right, with familiar icons on them. Clicking on any of those will take you to the sharing interface of your chosen platform. On that interface, you will be able to share whatever page you are on. If you want to share the whole site, share the home page.
If you know someone who might appreciate this site, please share it with them. Thank you.
First, you should run a search on the artist or venue you are considering to make sure someone has not created it already. For artists and venues, make sure you have also checked the stubs that have been automatically created but are not published since they lack content. Go to My Content > Stubs.
Once you log in, click on the red button on the header
.That will take you to a page that gives you the Artist, Store, and Venue options.
Pick the one you would like to create, and fill in the fields. Things of note:
Artists
- Content: Make sure you are writing up original content and not cut and pasting from Wikipedia or similar sites. We value what you have to say, not what Wikipedia does.
- Images:
- We prefer landscape images, if possible. They look better.
- We also prefer at least 1200px width on the pictures, if possible.
- We have a 2 Mb upper limit on the size of the pictures.
- For Store and Venue pictures, external pictures would be appreciated. It would help people spot the place in real life.
- Image Credits: If you can find the person who created the image you are using in the article, please provide their name in the credit section. They have put the work in, they should be recognized for it.
- City: Pick the city that they are based in currently but not necessarily where they began or where they grew up. An artist's base of operations gives fans a better sense wrt where they are likely to appear in live performances, as well as the artistic environment they are more likely to be interacting with. Obviously, people move so what is in this field will need updating in some cases. If the city you want to enter is not already in our base, the system will create it for you when you type it in. For cities, please follow this pattern:
- For North America:
- [city name], [state name] US
- [city name], [state name], Mexico
- [city name], [province name], Canada
- For the UK:
- [city name], [England | Northern Ireland | Scotland | Wales], UK
- Otherwise:
- [city name], [country name]
- For North America:
- Genre: Get as specific as you can with what appears in the autocomplete or the genre tree. If the best label for the artist's music is not there, create it as a new Style. When we see enough entries with that particular style designation, we sometimes promote it to a genre (actually a sub-genre but that would be nit-picky).
- Outline: This is where you get to describe this artist's music and genre or what we can expect if we saw them live, in your own words and your own thoughts. You have 1000 character limit as you do this. With Venues, the goal is to give the reader an idea of what kind of a venue the place is. Also in 1000 characters or less.
- If You Like: Who would you recommend this artist to on the basis of who they like? If we already have that artist, link them. Try not to rely on the "similar names" lists that places like Spotify, Apple Music, etc have. They are generated by algorithms based on user behavior instead of musical similarity, which is why it is not unusual to get names whose only commonality with the artist in question is their nationality or the language they speak. They are useful as a starting point though (All Music and Last FM are closer to the mark more often) but you may still need to check them out before deciding they are a good fit. (There is a 255 character limit.)
- Related To: Were they a member of some band, do they frequently collaborate with someone? Are they actually related to someone? Connect dots with people we may already know. If we have that artist, link them. Keep it in 500 characters.
- Elevator Pitch: This is where you get to sum up the artist with in 255 characters max. It should be much much shorter than that. Give us a one liner and have fun with it.
- Links:
- We have been placing the social media links in this order: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, others.
- We have been placing the streaming links to the songs and albums in this order: Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Open Spotify, Apple Music, others. (Bandcamp provides the best payoff to artists, as far as we know, Souncloud is mostly free, and Spotify is ubiquitious.)
Stores
- Size: We have no strict criteria for store size. Between small (only four, five customers able to go through the bins at a time) and mega (it's a warehouse!), the call on the size is for yours to make based on the range you've seen and perhaps others to disagree based on the range they've seen.
- Specialized in: is a small field so you cannot go wild in that field, but if anything basic jumps at you wrt genres and new vs used records, etc. Obviously, the larger the store gets, the more likely it will cover broader ground.
- Other Notes: Anything else you would like to add about the store, listening stations, what else they sell, etc.
- Parking: Nothing detailed. Basic things like whether they have their own parking lot or any tips that jump at you.
- Pictures: You can provide a picture of the place, typically from the inside, and preferably one you yourself took. Enter your name for credit in the image title section. This is optional if the picture is yours, not so if you found it on the internet. There is a 2 Mb limitation on the size of the pic.
- Map information: This part is not visible to authors. We will add that part. That is why you may not see a map immediately when you save the article.
Venues
- Age Restriction: A small field, so nothing elaborate. Just the plain facts.
- Max Capacity: The official maximum capacity of the venue. This information is usually available on the internet.
- Merch Stand, Bathrooms: Just quick directions in case no one in the venue can hear you asking because it is too loud. Merch stands are sometimes fluid. So put that in if you see a particular section of the venue is being used consistently.
- Other Notes, Parking, Pictures, Map information: Same as in the Stores above.
Don't worry, when you create another entry by the same name, you will not be writing over what was already there. The system has a way of treating the titles as incidental text. The only thing is that the link for the article, the URL, will probably have a dash after your title, and then some number. So it will look like this:
thepropagandasite.com/artist/[the-name-of-the-artist]-[some number]
instead of the regular:
thepropagandasite.com/artist/[the-name-of-the-artist]
We have adopted the following convention in articles.
In the outline section only:
- Bold-face the names of bands and artists on first mention (except the one that the entry is about; their name is in the title already).
- Same with the names of collectives, e.g., Odd Future, Elephant 6, etc.
- Same with venue names.
- If you are writing about a band, do not bold face the members' names.
- Italicize the names of albums and songs.
- Don't use bold-faces or italics in the other field, e.g., If you like, Elevator pitch, etc.
Throghout the article.
- Link the names of any artist, label, festival, or venue mentioned in your entry to The Propaganda Site article if we have an entry for them.
- Link any mention of an instrument that the reader may not be familiar with, or any other esoteric reference to either its wikipedia site or something comparable.
- Note that not every field allows links. Those that do either have a link icon at the top or you can hit ctrl+k on the keyboard.
Well, yes and no.
There is a maddeningly thin line between looking at an artist or their body of work critically, which we encourage, and being critical of them, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but not terribly helpful in this context.
* If a musician is a wizard on their instrument, or they are truly good songwriters, we should say so. These things are a part of an artist's appeal to fans, and pointing these out is informative.
* If an artist is focusing on the lyrics but not the melodies, or vice versa, or they put together complex chords but keep their rhythms relatively simple and uninteresting, those are also informative points. That is one way to look at an artist's work critically, which is fine.
* Stating that an artist's lyrics are crap, rhythms are boring, and can't carry a tune in a bucket is being critical of an artist, to say the least, is essentially walking all over the artist and their fans, ignoring what they see in the artist, and overall just rude and unhelpful.
If as an author you find yourself saying things like that about an artist, perhaps you should step back and let someone else who appreciates them write that piece, and maybe your time would be better spent writing about another artist whose work you enjoy that some other person would have torn down if they had not walked away from it.
Nope. None whatsoever. If it is music, and you think we should know about that artist or band, go for it. If you like them, you can bet that there are a whole bunch of others who also do, or will do as soon as they find out about them. So just put it out there. It will be appreciated and perhaps some users will even add on to the entry.
Not at all. Good music comes from all places and musical traditions. Every kind of music out there has its fans, and some of them are people who didn't even grow up with that tradition. So if this site can reach you through the internet and you are aware of an artist or band that you think should find a broader audience, go ahead and create an entry. Give us a sense of what they sound like, provide some streaming links, and thank you for contributing.
Yeah ....
First, not so much a restriction but a suggestion: until we have access to a reliable real-time translations, we would like the entries to be in English, which, for good or bad, has emerged as the lingua franca of the internet. So it is your best shot at reaching the widest fan base.
Second, it would be best to strive for a relatively neutral and descriptive tone and not get caught up in fanboy/fangirl-speak. Praising someone for their skills is fine, gushing over their awesomeness is a bit much. Sure the line is not always clear but we can all recognize it when we see it.
Third, we need to maintain basic civility in the comments section. There is no reason to put anyone down, whether they are fellow commenters or artists or an entire genre/style of music. One person's screeching nails on the chalkboard is another person's sweet and somewhat avant garde music.
Well ... how to put this nicely.
Do you think you can really put aside what you are trying to do with your music and objectively assess what your music sounds like to an outsider? It's not easy. There is a reason why artist profiles on festival line ups sound like they are either far off the mark or marketing pieces. The idea of this site partially came from those outlines not being terribly helpful in the first place.
So it will be tough. Maybe this is a job best done by someone who can take a step back.
Feel free to alert us if you see something objectionable though.