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About the Music Database



Introduction

This is the largest index of Industrial/Gothic music information on the World Wide Web. Much more than just a list of bands' home pages, this site also includes a relational database of artists, discographies, compilations, and labels. Some of its features are:

The overall format is loosely based on printed record guides like the Trouser Press and Rolling Stone books. I've always thought those guides were extremely useful for learning about new music. Of course, books of this sort have two serious limitations: they are out-of-date as soon as they are printed, and they are necessarily limited in scope and size. A Web-based guide is more or less free from those restrictions and can be even more flexible with its use of hypertext.

There are now a lot of people publishing useful musical information on the Web, including some very impressive artist home pages, discographies, interviews, and such. The last thing I want to do is to duplicate any of that effort, so the Internet Links are a very important part of this database. For some artists, I may not even bother to list a discography here if an existing home page already has one.

In fact, I think this database is a good complement to the ever-growing collection of home pages out there. Home pages can go into great depth with discographies, sleeve scans, audio clips, etc. This database is more concerned with breadth and the number of artists in the indices. This database also attempts to provide at least some information for all the artists that don't have any sort of home page. I also think that the more concise artist information here makes for better introductory browsing for people who may be unfamiliar with some of the artists listed.

What kind of music is represented here

Obviously this database is a pretty direct reflection of my own musical tastes, which includes a lot of industrial, gothic, and atmospheric stuff. I'm really not interested in turning it into some sort of "All Music" site that includes every genre imaginable. I'm more interested in coming up with fairly comprehensive lists of artists that fall within those general categories.

Current Status

To be fair, much of what I've said above is more of a statement of intent than a description of what exists today. While the index listings are fairly extensive already, the narrative artist descriptions and reviews are extremely lacking. Since most of my initial effort was in building the structure of the system rather than every aspect of the content, I haven't had time to do much writing. This is one piece that I hope other people can help with. Ultimately I'd like this thing to be a collaborative effort between lots of different people. For more information, see the How You Can Help page.


Ed Klein
eklein@kzsu.stanford.edu