Artist Biography Tutorial
From WWR
This is a humble attempt to simplify the editing of an Artist's Biography. Please feel free to add to or take away as you see fit if you can clarify the procedure! Thanks! Atuuschaaw 15:12, January 24, 2008 (AKST)
Contents |
This tutorial uses the Recently added music as a source for discovering artist pages that could use biographies. This is by no means the only way to do this, but it's one way.
Recently Added Music
Go to the left menu and click on Recently added music.
System List Albums
Now you will see the recently added albums that have been uploaded into Whole Wheat Radio's music library.
To see if an artist's biography has been added, just click on the artist's name!
Finding an Artist Biography
The ideal place to find biographical information will be under Press or Press Kit or Media on an artist's website. Artists typically PAY someone to write this information and it focuses on what they WANT the press to print -- and you to know -- about them. This information is intended to be used freely and liberally by all media. It is almost always more detailed and often more interesting than the paragraph or two that appears elsewhere on an artist's website. It is created for the person who is unfamiliar with the artist. If you found the artist's website already, you probably know at least something about them (genre, the name of a song or album, etc.). Judy_Rosella 14:29, February 3, 2008 (AKST)
Press info is written with the anticipation that a reporter is likely to edit it, at least a little. I have written for a number of newspapers, turning press releases into news stories. The way it is done is you are EXPECTED to do some editing. Press releases never ever run verbatim unless you pay for them to run exactly as written. Betcha didn't know that! If you are posting biographical info on an artist's page, you are a "reporter" and have the right to do that. It's a boon to the artist if you do a little responsible editing any time you see a reference to something outdated. For instance, if is 2008 and a press release mentions an "upcoming album to be released in 2005" you should edit the press release so the sentence is current -- or just leave it out. You'll often find great press releases that read just fine if you fix one sentence fragment. Judy_Rosella 14:29, February 3, 2008 (AKST)
Often you will also find photos in the press area that are there with the intention that someone -- like you -- will download them and use them to promote the artist. If there are photo credits on the press photos, you are expected to include the credits with any photos you put on a website or anyplace you use the photos. Sometimes a photographer will provide photos to a musician free of charge in exchange for having their name, and possibly even their photography website, appear on the musician's website. It's a win-win barter between the artist and the photographer. Help them out! Judy_Rosella 14:29, February 3, 2008 (AKST)
Once you are on the artist's page, you can easily see if anyone has added a biography or not.
In order to find information on the artist, you can either click on their website link or you can click on Google and search for the information. In this case, I clicked on the artist's website link that another Wheathead had entered into the system.
And it seems as if MySpace is his only web presence at the moment. So, I scroll down his page until I find a block of information on the artist and I simply highlight and copy the info. I personally paste the info into Notepad for convenience, but how you want to do it is entirely up to you.
Editing Artist's Page
Now back on the artist's page, I click on the edit link beside the title "Biography".
This takes me to the edit page for the biography section of the article.
Now I paste the information I found on his MySpace page under the Biography title. Notice that I did add a link to his MySpace page after the bio just so all will know where it came from. (As a courtesy to the person who wrote the biography and as a resource for future editors, add a link to the web page where you found the biography and the name of the author if the name is available.)
Show Preview
Once I paste the info under the Biography title, I scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and I click on Show preview just to see if what I have done looks OK. If the preview of the page doesn't look right...just change it up and play with it until a preview gives you what you like.
This is what the preview page looks like.
Once you have the page looking like you want, just scroll back to the bottom of the page and click Save page.
Finished
That's all there is to it. Now you can view your completed work.
If you have any problems, please just ask somebody, and if they can't help I'm sure they can direct you to one of us who can.
Additional tips
Added Note by Stickbender: For Windows folks, I find this works very nicely by utilizing the multiple tab browsing feature of Firefox and Internet Explorer. By opening the artist page in a new tab, it reduces the need to do so much clicking. I also open the artists site in an additional tab. This giving me two separate work areas while keeping my original tab intact. I can then review the artist site in one tab, copy something, and simply jump over to my other tab where I opened the Biography editor, paste it and so on. This allows me to easily return to any or all pages without confusion. When finished, I close my extra tabs and there I am back at where I started. To open a link in a new tab one can either 1) Center Click (mouse wheel), or 2) Right click the link and select "Open in new tab". -- Stickbender 14:52 Janurary 25, 2008 (AKST)
