Welcome to the Open Band Database

Now there are a lot of websites out there that are mainly focusing on reviews, but wants to provide relevant information about the bands and albums they are reviewing. This is something that really doesn't require any creative work at all because all info about a band derives from that band. Therefor writing your own biographies about bands is just a waste of time because you could as well grab the biography from the band or labels homepage. It is the same case with the discographies.
So that means that you have to do a lot of slave labour. So what you can do is three things:

You can do all that slave labour. Write down every biography, all the tracks of an album and all that. Some sites have done this very well, The BNR Metal Pages is one of them, and my own site Enslaved by Metal also have done a decent job doing this.
You can steal stuff from those who have already gathered the info to one place.
Or you can just drop it and don't provide info at all.

Most of those who makes websites are mostly interested in doing interviews, in reviewing albums and concerts, and don't want to use most of the time that is spent on the site with writing down info that is available thousands of other places already. So that is why I wanted to start this Open Database.

You may, by sending a HTTP GET request to our script, get any information stored in the database. The only thing that is required is that those who want to use this database also helps updating it.

News

5/02/2005 - More stuff can be edited

You can now edit release date and cover artwork of albums

4/27/2005 - Logos and photos & request for ideas about export scripts

Logos and band photos are now displayed in the info pages.
I also need people's opinions on how you would like to get this info on your site, what of it you would like and so on. Please head over to the forum and discuss it there.

4/21/2005 - Tracklists

A prototype for how one can add tracks to an album has been added. Check it out in the contribute section

4/19/2005 - Fixes

Did some fixes. Editing band biographies now works again.

4/18/2005 - Updated Database

I am now testing a lot of the contribution scripts and administration scripts to test if they are working propperly. It is a lot of scenarios that needs to be tested. So just keep contributing stuff, the more you contribute the more I get to test and the more info will be available here. Also, I have reset the database for the last time, so all that you contribute now will be properly evaluated and accepted/rejected into the final database.
As soon as I am finished with the administration scripts, I can focus on the export scripts so that you guys can take advantage of the wast knowledge of data that is stored here.

4/14/2005 - Forum Up

Okey, for this to work now, I need a lot of feedback from people interested in this project. Therefore I have decided to open up a little forum. It is pretty stripped for functions and stuff, but you can post there and you can use the same user on obdb as you can in the forum. It is also possible to use just an anonymous user by not registering at all.

3/9/2005 - Registration opened

Well, the site still looks pretty messy, but I think most of the stuff works. So now you can register and begin to add info. If you need an export script of sorts, mail me and I will write it ASAP.
I am now working on writing scripts for those who will approve the contents that has been submitted

2/27/2005 - Basics

I have written two contribution pages, one for adding new bands and one for adding new albums. These are quite crude yet, but I will add new stuff to them soon, as well as add pages for editing albums and bands.
I have also made a demo export script which everyone should check out so they can see how easy integrating info into a page can be. Just head for the export script section.

2/26/2005 - Here we go

Well, I have written a few test scripts for exporting data and you can see the result here (scroll down to cool albums)
I am currently writing the submit form for albums and bands. I will launch those pages under a contribution section soon. Shortly after I will make a registration script so people can start earning some contribution points. I figured that in order for this to work, people using export script should have contributed a small percentage of the content in order to use the scripts. More about this later.

2/6/2005 - The idea was launched

This website was launched. A few people have already shown their interest so we will see how far this thing goes. I have yet to make a design for the site, but as of now, I don't really think that it is necessary. There is a lot of programming to do.