Discogs

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Discogs
logo
discogs.com
description Database for discographies
languages multilingual
owner Zink Media, Inc.
Originator Members of the Discogs community
Published 2000

Discogs ( English discographies , German 'Diskografien') is a free, member-built online database for discographies by musicians and music labels . It has an Alexa Rank of 662 worldwide and 273 in Germany (as of October 2019). Its headquarters are in Portland , Oregon in the United States .

history

Discogs was founded in October 2000 by Kevin Lewandowski. Initially, Lewandowski wanted to manage his own record collection on his website , which soon met with approval and quickly developed into an ambitious project. A comprehensive overview of the genre of electronic music was created.

Due to the enormous increase in users, it was soon decided to expand the database to include other genres (e.g. hip-hop from January 2004). Was the database initially based on classic sound carriers such as B. records, CDs and cassettes, it was later limited to digital publications (MP3, WAV, Ogg Vorbis, etc.) and other sound carriers such. B. USB sticks expanded. The same applies to linked credits (producer, text writer, composer, etc.), which can now also be entered for non-musical activities such as design, management and film production.

In July 2014 it became known that Discogs was on the list of indexed websites of the Federal Inspectorate for Media Harmful to Young People , which netzpolitik.org described as a "classic case of over- blocking ".

functionality

Members of the Discogs community (444,000 in January 2019) can manage their private music collection in a collection ('collection') and wantlist ('wish list'). If a user has a publication that is not yet in the database, he can add it himself according to certain formatting rules. All entries and changes are implemented directly in the database. Only then are the entries and changes checked in a review process by users who are entitled to vote (years before these were exclusively selected, voluntary moderators) and then either accepted, rejected with justification or marked as requiring improvement. Duplicate entries can be merged into one entry (merging) .

In addition to official Discogs forums, there are also user-created forums that are not limited to discogs or music.

Since the end of 2005, it has been possible to buy and sell sound carriers (records, CDs, etc.) in the marketplace . Discogs does not act as a dealer, but only as an intermediary. In cooperation with Junodownloads , Discogs only sold digital publications in MP3 and WAV format.

Database

In March 2020, the database contained data on 12.2 million records, 6.7 million artists and 1.5 million record labels.

The sound carriers are divided into the following genres: Blues , Brass & Military , Children's, Classical , Electronic , Folk , World , Country , Funk / Soul , Hip-Hop , Jazz , Latin , Non-Music, Pop , Reggae , Rock and Stage & Screen.

Since August 2007, the contents of the database can also be called up in XML format. In addition, copies of the database content are now published monthly. The data sets are available under CC0 and can be obtained via an API .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Discogs at alexa.com , accessed October 24, 2019
  2. Andre Meister: List of indexed websites leaked: Federal testing agency confirms network blocking criticism such as overblocking. In: Netzpolitik.org . July 8, 2014, accessed October 15, 2014 .
  3. Self-disclosure on discogs.com, accessed January 13, 2019
  4. Statistics Discogs on Discogs.com accessed on March 29, 2020
  5. Discogs API v2.0 Documentation at discogs.com, accessed May 11, 2016