This post was written by Lisa Occhino and originally appeared on the Bandzoogle Blog
If you’ve never heard of MusicBrainz before, it’s sort of like Wikipedia, but specifically for information about music. It’s open source and maintained by the community, meaning anyone (including you!) can help contribute information about artists and their related works.
It’s important to have an artist page on MusicBrainz for SEO purposes (Google actually recommends it — more on that in our free ebook, A Complete Guide to SEO for Musicians), and also because it’s widely known as a reliable source of music data, so people will likely check for your band there.
So, how do you get in the MusicBrainz database? The website can look a little confusing at first glance if you’re not familiar with it, but it’s actually quite simple. Here’s a seven-step walkthrough.
Before you can create an artist page on MusicBrainz, you need a user profile. Click here and fill out the short form to create an account.
Most of the MusicBrainz website will be available to you after you verify your account, but until two weeks have passed and you have 10 accepted edits, a couple of actions will be restricted, such as voting or leaving edit notes on other people’s edits. For the purposes of creating an artist page, though, these restrictions won’t affect you.
Enter your artist or band name on the “search” page to make sure you don’t already exist in the database.
If you discover that you have an existing artist page (and you’ve double-checked that it’s not a different artist or band by the same name), you can contribute information to make the entry as accurate and complete as possible. Otherwise, continue to the next step below.
When you’re logged in to your account, you’ll see “editing” in the top navigation bar. Click that, and then click “add artist.”
Once you’re on the “add artist” page, fill in as much information as you can. If you’re in a band, be sure to add each band member under the “relationships” section, because artist pages that don’t contain relationships or releases will be automatically removed from the database within a few days.
When you’re ready, click the “enter edit” button at the bottom of the page.
(Need help? If you’re not sure what to enter in a particular field, check out this page for a detailed breakdown.)
Click the “edit” tab at the top of your artist page, and then scroll down to the “external links” section. Add links to your official website (don’t skip this — Google specifically recommends it), all of your social media pages, and any other places where your band has an online presence (e.g., Wikipedia, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, etc.).
Click the “enter edit” button at the bottom of the page to save the information you’ve submitted.
Click “editing” in the top navigation bar, and then click “add release.”
On the first tab, enter as much information as you have about your release. You’ll then move to the “tracklist” tab, where — you guessed it — you’ll enter the tracklist for your release. After that, you can assign recordings to the tracks from the “recordings” tab. Finally, you’ll want to add an edit note so that other users know where the information is from, and then click “enter edit” when you’re done.
If you’d like, you can add writing, performance, and engineering credits for the release through the relationship editor.
(Need help? If you’re not sure what to enter in a particular field, check out this page for a detailed breakdown.)
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations — you’ve successfully set up your artist page on MusicBrainz! Now, all you need to do is keep it up to date whenever something noteworthy happens, such as a new album release or a change in your band member lineup.
You should also check out: Complete SEO Checklist for Musicians
Lisa Occhino is the founder of SongwriterLink, a free songwriting collaboration website that matches you up with exactly the kind of co-writers you’re looking for. She’s also a pianist, award-winning songwriter, and graduate of Berklee College of Music.