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===Not Everything Inspiring Vaporwave is Vaporwave===
===Not Everything Inspiring Vaporwave is Vaporwave===
This is something that applies especially, if not exclusively, to releases that are sometimes referred to as "proto-vaporwave" or the like. Releases such as Oneohtrix Point Never's Replica, Vektroid's Neo Cali, or James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual have a tendency to be grouped with vaporwave for sharing specific aesthetics and being released around the time of the scene's origin point. For the sake of consistency and respecting the visions of artists before the scene's primary existence, these releases will not be covered on vaporwave.wiki as a vaporwave release.
This is something that applies especially, if not exclusively, to releases that are sometimes referred to as "proto-vaporwave" or the like. Releases such as Oneohtrix Point Never's Replica, Vektroid's Neo Cali, or James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual have a tendency to be grouped with vaporwave for sharing specific aesthetics and being released around the time of the scene's origin point. For the sake of consistency and respecting the visions of artists before the scene's primary existence, these releases will not be covered on vaporwave.wiki as a vaporwave release. This is done both out of respect for creator identification both inside and outside of the scene, and to better define the genre.


===Not Everything Called Vaporwave Is Vaporwave===
===Not Everything Called Vaporwave Is Vaporwave===
As quite possibly the most elastic netmusic genre to date, vaporwave can be difficult to define. However, it is worth understanding the nuances of genres outside of vaporwave so that releases on the wrong side of the fringe are not picked up mistakenly. If an artist has music that is stylistically closer to another genre than vaporwave and has had little to no interaction with the vaporwave scene, it's safe to say the music isn't vaporwave.To specify, plunderphonics is not vaporwave. Seapunk is not vaporwave. Lo-fi is not vaporwave. Synthwave, retrowave, outrun or whichever term best covers it is not vaporwave. Vaporwave can explore these concepts on a by-album basis, but they are not concrete parts of the genre in that way.
As quite possibly the most elastic netmusic genre to date, vaporwave can be difficult to define. However, it is worth understanding the nuances of genres outside of vaporwave so that releases on the wrong side of the fringe are not picked up mistakenly. If an artist has music that is stylistically closer to another genre than vaporwave and has had little to no interaction with the vaporwave scene, it's safe to say the music isn't vaporwave. To specify, plunderphonics is not vaporwave. Seapunk is not vaporwave. Lo-fi is not vaporwave. Synthwave, retrowave, outrun or whichever term best covers it is not vaporwave. Vaporwave can explore these concepts on a by-album basis, and vaporwave, can have sections akin to these genres, but they are not concrete parts of the genre as a whole in that way. Think of this as the relationship of a rectangle and square, essentially.


===Not Everything Vaporwave Should Be Documented===
===Not All Vaporwave Can Be Properly Documented===
Now, this is where things can get seriously subjective.  
Now, this is where things can get seriously subjective.  



Revision as of 06:24, 7 August 2019

Hello, and welcome to vaporwave.wiki! This site is dedicated to the documentation and preservation of the releases and artists of the vaporwave net-music scene. This page should act as a relatively comprehensive guide to use of the site.

It's recommended users have some preliminary knowledge of the usage of MediaWiki when contributing to the site.

Determining Vaporwave

Vaporwave is something difficult to define at times, making participants often assume more towards a fringe release being vaporwave rather than vice versa. On vaporwave.wiki, however, our reaction works the other way around, emphasizing clarity in every release's nature and relationship to the genre and scene. The following subtopics should explain this better.

Not Everything on a Label with Vaporwave is Vaporwave

Those familiar with labels such as Illuminated Paths, Ailanthus Recordings or Adhesive Sounds recognize that though they are considered labels within the vaporwave scene, this does not quality each release published as vaporwave by default. Even heavily influencial projects in the scene such as Business Casual are known to publish music outside of the genre (i.e. Golem Who Goes Fish), so please keep this in mind when considering a submission.

Not Everything by an Artist who Made Vaporwave is Vaporwave

Simply put, the actual audio behind a release (along with the artist's stance on whether or not it fits criteria) determines a release's stance as vaporwave more than the creator behind it. This includes Vektroid's later works (including Seed & Synthetic Earth and GDGA1, to only name a couple), INTERNET CLUB (and related projects), and NYKDLN, as core examples.

Not Everything Inspiring Vaporwave is Vaporwave

This is something that applies especially, if not exclusively, to releases that are sometimes referred to as "proto-vaporwave" or the like. Releases such as Oneohtrix Point Never's Replica, Vektroid's Neo Cali, or James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual have a tendency to be grouped with vaporwave for sharing specific aesthetics and being released around the time of the scene's origin point. For the sake of consistency and respecting the visions of artists before the scene's primary existence, these releases will not be covered on vaporwave.wiki as a vaporwave release. This is done both out of respect for creator identification both inside and outside of the scene, and to better define the genre.

Not Everything Called Vaporwave Is Vaporwave

As quite possibly the most elastic netmusic genre to date, vaporwave can be difficult to define. However, it is worth understanding the nuances of genres outside of vaporwave so that releases on the wrong side of the fringe are not picked up mistakenly. If an artist has music that is stylistically closer to another genre than vaporwave and has had little to no interaction with the vaporwave scene, it's safe to say the music isn't vaporwave. To specify, plunderphonics is not vaporwave. Seapunk is not vaporwave. Lo-fi is not vaporwave. Synthwave, retrowave, outrun or whichever term best covers it is not vaporwave. Vaporwave can explore these concepts on a by-album basis, and vaporwave, can have sections akin to these genres, but they are not concrete parts of the genre as a whole in that way. Think of this as the relationship of a rectangle and square, essentially.

Not All Vaporwave Can Be Properly Documented

Now, this is where things can get seriously subjective.

Vaporwave is something easily accessible by nature (quick but effective editing that may or may not have bumped up people's image of Audacity in the DAW world), but this is something that can lead to saturation from quick, if not careless, production. With this in mind, it is generally discouraged to cover work here that is intentionally or otherwise low-effort and throwaway in nature. This includes "parody albums" almost unanimously, though some sincere works may also be pruned as a result when releases are made in a my-first-vaporwave-track fashion. Minimalist modification of samples is not a sign of a release being unworthy of coverage, but when it borders plagiarism or basic mockery of the scene this raises a red flag. Not to say no parody releases are valid, but it's low-hanging fruit that can usually end up filling up the Bandcamp tag for new releases. In the end, the state of the music being heartfelt is worth more than its production quality.

Basic Page Layout

All artist, label and release pages have a similar layout, with variations in the data they contain.

Release

  • Infobox
  • Summary
  • Tracklist
    • Optional: Tracklist Comparison
  • Optional: Description
  • Optional: Gallery
  • External Links
  • Navboxes
  • Categories

Artist

  • Infobox
  • Summary
  • Aliases
  • Optional: Gallery
  • Navbox
  • Categories

Label

  • Infobox
  • Summary
  • Discography
  • Optional: Gallery
  • External Links
  • Navbox
  • Categories

Images

Necessary for every page outside of categories and templates, images are helpful for a full scope of information on the site.

Obtaining Images

Bandcamp

When a release cannot be downloaded, or is behind a paywall, there is a quick method of obtaining an uncompressed cover or other Bandcamp image for uploading here.

  1. Open the image in a new tab, in a way that displays the URL like so: [1]
  2. Change the "_10" to "_0", resulting in this: [2]
  3. Save and upload!

SoundCloud

Soundcloud saves its images as 500x500px jpg files regardless of original resolution or quality, as opposed to Bandcamp. However, images are still obtainable.

  1. Click on the cover of the track in question, resulting in the page pulling up a slightly larger version of the cover and turning the rest of the screen grayscale.
  2. Right click on the cover, and select "Inspect element".
  3. Copy the URL that appears in the related line of code, and copy it to a new tab.
  4. Save and upload!

Naming Images

Images should be named in a manner that is easy to identify on a per-release and per-image basis. While page names are encouraged to be accurate to the original release, image names should be in a standard title-caps fashion. Foreign languages should be romanized in the filenames to the best of one's ability. A - should be put between the release/artist/label name and the purpose of the image. Examples include File:SapporoKontenporari-Cover.jpg for 札幌コンテンポラリー, File:BlackHorse-Cover.jpg for black horse, and File:Misuto-GlowCover.jpg for the track "glow" on ミスト.

Categorizing Images

When uploading images, it is appreciated immensely if users provide a short description of the image linking to the main page it is used in, along with the category for the image itself.

  • For release covers, put the image in the Cover Art category.
  • For physical media scans, put the image in the Physical Media category.
  • For images related to artists, put the image in the Artist Images category.
  • For images related to labels, put the image in the Label Images category.

General Page Elements

These are elements that are shared alike between releases, artists and labels.

Infoboxes

A core part of the page, the infobox helps give primary information on a release/artist/label, its statistics and, in the case of a release, its place in an artist's discography (along with the cover or logo, of course!) The Template:MusicInfobox, Template:ArtistInfobox and Template:LabelInfobox pages include instructions and other information on using them.

Navboxes

Short for "navigational box", these templates allow for easy navigation from an artist or label's particular release to their entire discography. Creating these templates can be complicated, but placing the proper links on a page for them is something that is a simple process.

At the bottom of the page, the artist's navbox should be put under the External Links section. If applicable, the label's navbox is placed under it. However, in various-artist compilations, the label's navbox goes above the artists' templates (which should be in order of appearance on the compilation, like so.)

Categories

Categories are a straightforward concept. These sort pages into various metrics to make searching the site a more interactive and enjoyable experience.

For releases, this currently includes...

The Release and Release Type tags are added automatically, along with the Label tag (when using MusicInfobox and Label templates.) The artist tag can be added by adding |C at the end of the template, like so:

{{Artist|Vektroid|C}}

. |V and |F can be used for Compilation and Featuring categories, specifically.

The date tag and physical tags are added through template use as well, ReleaseDate requiring a |C but Format adding categories automatically.

For artists, this currently includes...

For labels, this currently includes...

Release Pages

The bread and butter of the wiki, release pages give information on everything there is to listen to in the documented vaporwave discography.

Synopsis

This is a basic summary of the release, using a few sentences to describe the history of the release. This can be used to describe the basic style of the music, but this should be kept from being unnecessarily flavorful (especially an artist writing about their own releases on the site.)

Tracklist

As the most coding-intensive part of the page, the tracklist is stored in a table to display track names, translations where necessary, and track lengths.

  • In the case of splits, compilations, or other releases that involve multiple artists, a new column is added to accomodate for the artist.
  • When (official) music videos are available for a track, the link should be put in bold quotations next to the track title like so: (MV)
  • When track names require a translation to English, the translation should be written in a small, italicised font underneath the track name, like so.
  • When describing a physical release with sides (i.e. vinyl, cassette) the track number section can be shifted to accommodate this (using A1, A2, etc. as opposed to 1, 2...)

Example

# Artist Track Length
A1 Test Artist テスト (MV)
Test
8:00
A2 Test Artist 別テスト
Another test
2:40
B1 Test Artist 2 Continued Testing (MV) 1:00:01
B2 Test Artist 2 Pause Testing 0:01

Description

Basically, the information contained in a Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or similar streaming/hosting service's description fields, sometimes containing flavor text or extra information on the creation of the release.

External Links

Formatted entirely in bullet points, this should link to other sites that supply more useful information on the release at hand. Most importantly, this section houses the official links to listen to the release itself. This section is usually formatted like so:

  • Bandcamp
  • SoundCloud
  • Discogs
  • Rate Your Music
  • Last.fm

Official links should be formatted in bold. When releases are removed from official streaming locations, a (Removed) should be put next to the link.

Artist Page

This is where a vaporwave-maker's history and artistic visions can be best preserved. That and as many Bandcamp links as can fit on a page depending on how many aliases they have.

Synopsis

Usually self-explanatory! Can mention an artist's works inside and outside the scene, along with general achievements and goals.

Discography

The largest part of the page, this covers a vaporwave artist's output in a by-alias format, each name with its own discography list and external links. The best example of this can be seen as a part of the Vektroid page.

Gallery

Images related to the artist and their aliases.

Label Page

While containing less sections than a release, label pages are important in allowing for information on releases otherwise impossible to put into a navbox.

Synopsis

As with release and artist pages, this first section of the page is meant to be introductory to the history of the label, its creator, the general style of its output, and other necessary pieces of information.

Discography

Like the Tracklist section of release pages, the discography of a label is contained in a single table, though the label table is more complex in nature. Due to usually containing much more releases than tracklists do tracks (and having more information that may require sorting,) discography tables are able to be sorted by their columns. Like that of categories, the values inside the table need to be given extra formatting in order to properly alphabetize. This may be something more difficult to put into a quick summary, so viewing the source code of a page such as fortune 500 should cover this best.

External Links

This should be formatted in the exact same manner as how it is handled in release pages! Last.fm may not have functionality with labels though.