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Sorry if this has been touched upon before or is mentioned elsewhere on Wikipedia but I wanted to bring up something that's been bugging me for many months. I don't believe that Allmusic should be considered a wholly reliable source for discographical information—at least, it shouldn't be used as a definitive source. Just today, I reverted a large expansion of the discography section in the Howlin' Wolf article by a user who had cited Allmusic, Amazon.com and CD Universe as his sources for this expansion. The trouble is that his expansion included lots of erroneous release dates, incorrect record labels, and even fictitious album titles...all copied verbatim from Allmusic, Amazon etc.

Commercial sites like Amazon and CD Universe are obviously only concerned with listing currently available product and so an album—especially an older album—will be listed in its currently available edition and as such, will only be listed with the release date or record label of the modern reissue which is often totally different to the album's original release. Now, I'm not sure whether internet vendor sites like Amazon or CD Universe should even be considered as a reliable source for discographies (I couldn't see anything that expressly forbade the use of Amazon et al) but I'm guessing that they're not, in which case no problem. However, Allmusic—who are most certainly considered a reliable source—repeat many of the same discographical mistakes that the online vendors do, often confusing an album's release year and record label with its modern reissue and in some instances, even listing completely fictitious albums!

Now, I know that's a strong allegation to throw out regarding a trusted source like Allmusic, and I want to make it clear that I'm not questioning Allmusic's standing as a reliable source for factual information about songs, albums, Billboard chart positions, industry awards or album production credits, just their standing as a reliable source for discographical information. I'm repeatedly impressed with the factual accuracy found in the majority of Allmusic's content but their artist/band discographies are appallingly bad IMO.

Now, I'm sure that most Wikipedians here refer to multiple reliable sources in their quest to acquire accurate discographical information but while Allmusic is listed as a reliable source for discographies, it means that other, less discerning editors, can take Allmusic as gospel and pretty much copy & paste from Allmusic straight into Wikipedia articles. I can, of course, provide multiple examples of Allmusic's discographical inaccuracies if that is required, but I'm betting that I'm not the first person here to notice this about Allmusic.com. --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 16:20, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Fictitious releases? I'm quite impressed by that. Do you have examples? --^{SteelersFanUK06} HereWeGo2010! 22:51, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I can provide examples but I would stress that fictitious album's are rare on Allmusic and usually (although not always) found in the compilation albums section. It's much more common to see incorrect release dates or record labels than fictitious albums on Allmusic.

Anyway, my first example is from The Byrds' compilations discography (see here). The very first entry is an album supposedly released in 1964 by Columbia Records with the title Early Byrds (catalogue number 18515). I can tell you categorically that there is no such album as Early Byrds and even if there were, it would not have been released in 1964, since the band didn't start recording for Columbia until 1965. This Allmusic entry is, I'm guessing, referring to one of the three compilations of Byrds rehearsal recordings dating from 1964 that have been released on the Preflyte, The Preflyte Sessions and In the Beginning albums. However, none of these three albums were released in 1964 or by Columbia Records, and there never was an album with the title Early Byrds. Staying with The Byrds, Allmusic also lists an album supposedly released in 1969 called Early Flight (Jet Set) on Together Records, which is obviously referring to the Preflyte album but the fact remains, there is no album named Early Flight (Jet Set). There are many other date/record label inaccuracies in Allmusic's Byrds discography but those are the fictitious albums.

Some other examples of albums that don't exist are as follows: a Bob Dylan compilation released in 1992 on Germany's PBA label titled Bob Dylan (see here), a 1993 Bob Dylan compilation called Greatest Songs (see here), a Brewer & Shipley album from 1978 called Not Far from Free (see here), a 1992 Crosby, Stills and Nash compilation album titled The Very Best of Crosby, Stills and Nash (see here), and a 1984 compilation album by Gram Parsons called Melodies (see here). This last album is an error that I assume arose from confusion with the 1979 Gene Parsons' album Melodies, which was re-issued by Sundown Records in 1984. Anyway, these are just a few examples of non-existent albums that I've come across in recent months, but I'm sure that there are many more.

Something I should say, however, is that you often see Allmusic's mistakes repeated on other websites such as winamp.com, mog.com and even billboard.com. I assume that this is because Allmusic licenses their content to these sites. So, if you Google any of the examples I've given, you might see other websites mentioning these albums too, but a click on any of these search results will reveal the same lack of info as Allmusic regarding these non-existent albums. Of course, if I've made a mistake and some of these albums do indeed exist, I apologise and I'll gladly stand corrected, but I don't believe that they do.

While we're on the subject, I'd also like to point out a few examples of incomplete or misleading discographies: H. P. Lovecrafts's second album H. P. Lovecraft II is missing from their discography (see here); Ride's main album discography lists Live Light, which is a bootleg (albeit one the band tolerated) and not an official album (see here); the main Bert Jansch album discography fails to list his second album It Don't Bother Me, instead listing it as a compilation (see here and here), and on Stephen Duffy's discography page there's an entirely fictitious 1995 album titled Kiss Me and his debut album, The Ups and Downs, is listed twice: once for its original 1985 release and again in 2008 for its expanded CD reissue (see here).

Something else I forgot to say in my initial post is that Allmusic's singles discographies are often even worse and more incomplete than their album discographies are! --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 14:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I always thought their discographies were a mess. Maybe it's because I listen to more obscure stuff, I dunno. But look at Yellow Magic Orchestra's discography "main albums":

• Three albums are compilations
• Record labels are incorrect for all but one album - it's more like "whatever label we found the album on" rather than what they were originally released on, and even if that were the case their albums were never released by Pioneer, or Avex Trax per se (Commmons and Avex Trax are both unrelated labels of the Avex Group)
• One studio album is absent (Naughty Boys)
• X∞Multiplies is listed twice, once with the incorrect date and using the Japanese title (it is a rather confusing issue though, as there is a Japanese EP and several export market A&M-issued LP compilations that all go by the same English name, but I digress)
• The 2009 "album" "Encore" is a bootleg!

Also, all singles from the band's original run (1978-1983) are not listed, not even US releases. The Compilations section is a similar disaster. --Zilog Jones (talk) 22:18, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

For discographies which I have worked on in the past, I have found that Allmusic is not reliable enough to be used as a source, but can be used as a general reference for a discography. A couple of uses are The Prodigy discography#References and Interpol discography#References. Don't know if this helps. --^{SteelersFanUK06} HereWeGo2010! 13:27, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I am no iconoclast, but not only have I found absolutely false information on Allmusic.com and could add a couple more titles of fictitious releases by major artists that appear as if they exist on Allmusic, as well as vast omissions of data (such as not all singles or albums releases that are extant and that have charted be listed as such) but I will go so far as to say I have found both the old and new (unpaid) Billboard.com and the RIAA.com sites sorely lacking, with erroneous dates, incomplete data and more. This is particularly troubling, as of course those are primary sources. I'm afraid to say that there is no definitive site and as we move toward a more commercialized web, there is less likely to be one, as various data sources consider their archives proprietary. (I know, I sound like an open-source, Burning-man anarchist Libertarian.) Of course we can't say that someone can't use these sources, yet how do we prove the negative in those instances where there is a fictitious claim? Some will argue that without a reliable source refuting the claim, the strongest evidence is the supposedly professional and popularly perceived as authoritative source. In a few instances I have privileged first-party information regarding the genesis of the fictitious releases (which does me no good here from the standpoint of third-party RS) and in other instances I have no idea how something came to be claimed. (With regard to the supposed German Dylan release I would note that German copyright law is egregiously lax, and German companies get away with things that few other so-called first-world countries' companies could, although I will speculate that an artist of Dylan's stature and resources may have learned of an unauthorized release that was officially announced and marketed, and had his people put a stop to it before it could actually be released.)

I'll also confirm what was said regarding the mirroring of some biographical and release content (as well, of course, as charting content) between Billboard.com and Allmusic, which compounds the problem, as it may seem to the casual editor or reader that two so seemingly authoritative sites are independently confirming something.

It's hard to say what we should do about policy regarding this, but I just wanted to add to the confirmation of the points raised by the previous posters in this thread. Abrazame (talk) 10:56, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Allmusic must be verified before using it as a reference, however, it is my opinion that it should remain as a source. The last time I checked, the staff at allmusic amounted to about 50 people, not enough to keep up with their task. There is a sizeable amount of incorrect information and also a lack of information where works have not been uploaded into their database. Artists, or labels can send in works, and that speeds up the addition of those works to their database. Allmusic also have a feature by which corrections -using a good reference source for the corrected information- can be sent in online. If an allmusic reference is needed, and their info is incorrect for the reference, the info can be corrected through that feature prior to using the reference. Doc2234 (talk) 11:26, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I've proposed splitting this guideline, and have opened an RFC: Wikipedia talk:Record charts/RFC.—Kww(talk) 20:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I extend this invitation to any project members interested in working on Grammy articles/lists. Thanks! --Another Believer _(Talk) 21:51, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This is an alert about a bogus entry. This article needs to be removed as soon as possible. This article is blatantly incorrect. It seems to be written by someone who is making up "facts". Although the structure looks impressive, the discography is not remotely correct. The actual discography contains almost 2 times as many albums as listed. Their are singles listed that are in fact albums. I am not an expert and to not have the resources to edit. Samuel Chorneau — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bchorneau (talk • contribs) 10:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I have nominated the page Wale discography for featured list a few days ago. Maybe some people can leave comments on it? Thanks

Michael Jester (talk) 06:32, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I looked through the archives to see if this was covered, but what is the status on the "Extended Versions" albums? I'm gathering that they seem to only be released through Wal-Mart, but I've noticed they don't seem to be in any discographies that I noticed. I saw a few of them with articles, but they seemed to be fairly old (5 years or so). Is it that they should be added to discographies, but haven't simply because it hasn't been "gotten around to yet"? Or is there a consensus that I couldn't locate regarding them not being placed on the lists? DurinsBane87 (talk) 09:27, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

What do you editors feel about "List of ARTIST songs" articles in addition to discographies? Case in matter, List of Kate Bush songs, where there is already Kate Bush discography. I don't see many of them, but if one is notable, so is every other. Any thoughts? --Muhandes (talk) 14:49, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Are there any Alanis' fans out there or at least people that might help? I'm re-writing her discography (you can see what I've done so far on my personal page) and I've been wondering how to classify her non-studio albums. For instance, MTV Unplugged is by default a live album, which makes it go to live albums section. The Collection is a compilation album. But how about Feast on Scraps, iTunes Originals and Jagged Little Pill Acoustic? FoS is a double album (CD/DVD), CD consists of songs that were not included in Under Rug Swept, and a DVD is a full live show. Jagged Acoustic is an album released at oroginal Jagged Little Pill's 10th anniversary. And I have no idea what iTunes Originals is and if it's neccessary to include in discography section at all. -- Cannot (talk) 17:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I've done some more on Nadia Ali's discography and was wondering if anyone can go through it and help me improve it from it current C-Class rating to a FL. Hassan514 (talk) 05:39, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I am developing the discographies of two record producers, and I am interested in finding a Feature List template from which to build my pages. The only producer's list that I have seen is the Quincy Jones discography. The other list that may be applicable is for the label Willowtip Records discography. The discographies that I am working on have a sizeable number of entries. One contains over 200 entries. Is there a Good or Feature List producer's discography that I can use as an example? Doc2234 (talk) 01:56, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Hello all the members of the discographies wikiproject. Currently I have K-Ci & JoJo discography as a featured list candidate. However, its been a long time and not many people have made comments on it. I would appreciate it if any members could check it out.
—Michael Jester (talk) 16:00, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

From the looks of it, not much people have been very active with the project. Is a membership cleanup needed? — Status {^talk_contribs 10:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

My understanding has been that the certifications marked mastertone at (e.g.) RIAA apply only to downloadable ringtones for mobile phones and therefore are not relevant to sales/shipments certifications for singles that we show in our discographies. I have reverted a few well-intentioned edits based on this understanding I have. For example

• RIAA – Searchable Database: Smack That; It seems (to me) that "Smack That" is only double-platinum as a digital single; the 3× Platinum is for mastertone only.
• RIAA – Searchable Database: Fireman; RIAA shows gold for digital song only, platinum is for the ringtone.
• RIAA – Searchable Database: Chamillionaire; the song "Ridin'" is gold as a digital single, it's only as a mastertone that it's (yow!) 4× Platinum.

Have I gotten the wrong impression here? I figure that even if the entire song is downloaded as a mastertone, the user doesn't listen to the whole thing when their phone rings (except when they're behind me in the dang bus). Only the certs of type "digital" or "standard" count for us. What do you think? — JohnFromPinckney (talk) 18:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)