My Taste Map

Get on the map

Not on the map yet?

Musicians look themselves up here and find nothing, with their music on every streaming service. Here is why, and the ten-minute fix.

Why you are not here

Ear Clef reads two open catalogs, MusicBrainz and Discogs, that anyone can add to and everyone can use. Streaming services know your songs but not where you are from, and their catalogs are not ours to copy. So if nobody has added you to the open catalogs, this site cannot see you.

The fix is to add yourself. It is free, it takes about ten minutes, and it puts you into the commons every open music project reads from, not only this one.

The three fields that matter here

Ear Clef is a map. Where and when you appear on it comes from three fields on your MusicBrainz record. Everything else is optional.

  • Area

    The place your music belongs to. For a person, usually where you were born and raised; for a band, where it formed. If your music happened somewhere else, choose that. Pick a city when MusicBrainz has it: the city is what places you in a US state or a UK nation, and the country follows from it.

  • Begin area

    Where you were born, or where the band formed. It can be the same place as Area.

  • Begin date

    Your birth year, or the year the band formed. A year is enough. Without it the site cannot place you in an era, and eras are how people browse here.

The steps

  1. Create a MusicBrainz account

    Free. A username, a password, and an email you check, then confirm the email. Create the account.

  2. Check you are not already there

    Search your name. Someone may have added you. If a record exists, sign in and fill in the three fields above. If the name belongs to someone else, you will add a short note that tells you apart, like “folk singer from Oaxaca”.

  3. Add yourself as an artist

    From the Editing menu, choose Add artist. Your name, whether you are a person or a group, then the three fields above. Add your links while you are there: your site, Bandcamp, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music. Those links are how anyone later proves a record is really yours. In the edit note, say you are the artist.

  4. Add at least one release

    A single is enough. On your new artist page, choose “Add release”: title, year, and the tracklist. This step matters: MusicBrainz removes an artist that has no releases and no links.

  5. Optional: add yourself to Discogs

    Discogs is the second catalog this site reads, and digital releases are welcome there. It matters most in the countries where Ear Clef fills gaps from Discogs records.

  6. Tell us

    Email your MusicBrainz link and we will re-read your country. If you are in a country too big for the map to store in full, we will send you a short code so we can pin you. The next section explains that.

Adding yourself goes live at once. MusicBrainz applies a new artist and its links automatically, with no vote to wait for. Changes to records that already exist can wait up to seven days for other editors to vote.

What happens next, honestly

  • Your name in search, soonMusicBrainz usually catches up within hours. Search your name on the globe and your page opens with your releases, read live from the catalog.
  • Your country and region, at the next refreshThe country and region lists are rebuilt by hand, roughly weekly, and when you write to us. That is when you appear in them.
  • The big-country caseFifty countries hold more artists than this site stores, and a new record has no community tags to rank on. There, once you have proved control of a page, you are guaranteed a place in your country’s list. Not the top of it: ranking comes from what the MusicBrainz community has tagged, the same for everyone.
  • What we cannot promiseA play button. Those come from an independent check that a recording is really yours, and nothing gets that from its own record. A page of your own on Ear Clef: those are still curated. Speed: MusicBrainz’s index and our refresh run on their own clocks.

Proving a page is yours

When you write, we send a short code. Put it somewhere only you can edit: your Bandcamp bio, your YouTube channel description, or a page on your own site. We look, record the page, the code and the date, and pin you. After that you can take the code down.

We cannot check who you are, and we do not try. We check that you control the place your music lives. That is what the pin promises.

What Ear Clef keeps

  • Nothing you type hereThis page has no form. The email goes to a person’s inbox and stays there, with your address on it.
  • A copy of your public catalog recordYour MusicBrainz id, name, career years, and tags, the same compact record kept for every artist on the map. Public catalog data, refreshed from MusicBrainz.
  • If we pin you: the evidenceYour MusicBrainz id, the page you proved control of, the code, and the date we saw it. That record is what makes the pin a promise rather than a name in an email.
  • What you add to MusicBrainz is openIt is published under open licenses, under your username, publicly and permanently. That is the point: it lets every open project use it, this one included. Know that before you add.

The privacy note covers the rest of the site.

Done the steps?

Send your MusicBrainz link and, if you like, a page you control. A person reads it.

Email oneskyally@gmail.com