FAQ

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, push the red button on the header that now says with a megaphone"Propagandize""Add".

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:

• Content: Make sure you are writing up original content and not cut and pasting from wikipedia or similar sites. Your name will appear as a contributor, you don't want to  be known as the cut/paste person, right? 
• 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 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: For artists, pick the city that they are based in currently. That suggests where they are likely to appear more often in live performances, and who they might be interacting with more professionally. If the city you want to enter is not already in our base, the system will create it for you. Please follow this pattern: "[city name], [state name if the US, country name if the UK], [country name]".
• 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 tend to promote it to a genre (actually a sub-genre but that would be nit-picky). (Artist only)
• 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, not musical similarity. You can use them to get started (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.) (Artist only)
• 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. (Artist only)
• 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. (Example: one of the first examples we were tossing around when discussing this field internally was "Barbra Streisand on acid" being the elevator pitch for Björk, who unfortunately, is way too famous to include in this site.) (Artist only)
• 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.) (Artist only)
• Pictures: In Stores and Venues, 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. The 2 Mb limitation also applies here. (Store and Venue only)

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.

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]

Yeah, the form comes up with the album field already available and will not save the form unless you fill it out. If the artist you are entering does not have an album (or EP) yet, just click on the "Remove" button right next to it and the album field (more like a colection of fields) will go away and you can continue to save your entry.

There is currently a workflow. That means when you create the article it is a draft article. It stays in that state as long as you feel like you need to work on it. When you are ready for the world to see it, you need to select "Review Queue" option and click on "Apply". That will put that in the review queue. As soon as an editor goes through it they will click publish it. Your piece will be available to the public after that.

You will see a red "This article is not published" banned superimposed on your entry until the article is published.

If the editor needs more clarification for you, they may reject it with a note to give you a chance to make whatever adjustment they thought the entry needs.

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.

Nothing. Reviews are good, they are fun to read, and they induce a lot of reader engagement. But they are not particularly useful if you do not already know the artist or are familiar with their background. It is also not that useful if you do not know about the reviewer's particular taste or where they are coming from.

Besides, there are a lot of album review sites on the internet, but not a lot of descriptive sites.

It is conceivable that at some point we could get interested in incorporating reviews into our site, but at the moment our focus is on discovery and providing a guidebook for the vast amounts of great music that is out there.

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.

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.