Contributor Insights: The Who’s Who of Spring 2020

We’re not a fashion mag, but we do have some hot takes. Dive into the second overview of our contributor community.

Published in

Viberate — Music Data Company

4 min readMay 13, 2020

You don’t need us to tell you how, um, interesting March and April turned out to be. What we can tell you, though, is that our community saw quite a bit of progress and continues to be overwhelmingly positive. Let’s take a closer look.

Overview

If creating order and mapping the music world were among your New Year’s resolutions, you aren’t alone. Since the beginning of the year, more than 2500 new contributors have joined our ranks. Good to have you, guys!

Looking at the countries you contribute to the most, the United States is the most covered so far, followed by a couple of European countries, Canada, and Latin and South America. The map below shows the 20 countries with the most contributions and can give you new ideas on where in the world to explore next, add new findings, and earn some sweet points.

Contributor Spotlight

Did you notice that some contributors like to communicate with each other by changing their nicknames? We think that’s pretty creative. Especially since these “renamers” are a couple in real life. Talk about #couplegoals, huh?

A special shout-out goes to Be Yourself, a newcomer from Venezuela who joined our community mid-March and has already made her way to the very top. She finished second in April with 255453 points. Good going!

This round’s top contributors with the Godlike Badge, OneOffFan Inc. and Andresqui👽, come from different sides of the world. Their editing specialty seems to be Events, but making Artist profiles shine is not that far behind. Check out their stats below.

What’s New & in the Pipeline

You guys seem to like the new Task feature in your overview section and are showering the selected profiles with extra attention. Thank you! The feature will be evolving regularly and you’ll be the first to know about any new perks.

In the meantime, start moving those champagne bottles towards the fridge, as the freshly revamped and updated Contribution landing page is coming up soon, so celebrations will be in order.

Tips & Tricks

In case you missed our last newsletter (be sure to sign up below if you’re not receiving it yet!), here’s this month’s hottest tip: social presence is crucial, so be sure to consider this when you’re adding or editing links:

1/ Active profile.
All links must be active and must display content. Social platforms must show activity in the last 3 years. Example: The artist is currently performing/making/posting music.
2/ Accurate data.
Make sure that the links you’re adding belong to the artist or venue. Example: In case of bands, only add band links, not band members’ links.

Who’s Who at Viberate?

This time around, say hi to our “resident music geek”, genre scientist Nik, who’s been honing our genre and subgenre system and has been overseeing the accuracy of your edits since the very beginning.

Even though he’s an audio engineer and a hobby DJ (btw, his biggest fan at one time was an 80-year-old gentleman who came to his every afternoon nu-jazz set), Nik believes he’s learnt the most about genres and music through everyday experience. “When I work on our database, I’m always listening to the artists I’m adding or editing. If I stumble upon an artist or track I really like, or a sound I’ve never heard before, I then spend literal days in my off-time digging through entire discographies.”

“I like fusion and experiments in music, especially tracks that are hard to define genre-wise. Lately, I jam to Moses Sumney’s ‘Cut Me’.”

In his words, invention in music is always exciting, but baffling at certain points. “The most interesting new genre for me is Brazilian ‘Funk Carioca’. Every part of the track sounds offbeat, but like magic, it works when put together. And the most bizarre new subgenre I’ve come across is ‘Post-Teen Pop’. So… it’s just ‘adult pop’? I don’t think every small difference should merit the creation of a new (sub)genre. But that’s just me.”

And just like that, our overview is done & dusted! Make sure you keep an eye on your inbox for our newsletter, and make “extra sure” to continue being awesome.