UtaiteDB - General guidelines
General rules
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Avoid submitting entries that already exist in the database. Duplicates have to be deleted or merged by the staff.
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When editing entries that are finalized or approved (not drafts), make sure you have a good reason, and preferably state that reason in the edit notes unless it’s obvious. If you’re unsure of whether your edit is appropriate and necessary, ask in the comments, twitter, forum, or by email.
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This is a database for utaite artists and other related artists. Instrumental songs and other vocalists are allowed when they appear on albums together with utaites, but albums without utaite-related artists are generally not relevant to our focus. Totally unrelated content will be deleted.
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Download links to illegal file-sharing sites that provide no useful information (like Mediafire/4Shared/Torrents) are NOT allowed. Links to informative blogs/forums/wikis are allowed, but should be categorized as “Unofficial”. The staff members reserve the right to remove any links deemed inappropriate. *Unlike VocaDB, UtaiteDB does not allow linking to unauthorized uploads of content that is not publicly or officially available on the Web (such as YouTube/Tumblr uploads of album-only songs or magazine scans). In addition, some explicitly do not allow reprints of their work, so please refrain from linking to unofficial re-uploads for these artists.
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Direct download links to media files (such as .mp3) are generally not allowed, even if they’re official and legal. If the song/video is officially distributed, link to the artist’s official download page (for example on piapro) instead.
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Creating multiple user accounts is not allowed. Any kind of abuse, manipulation of ratings or spamming will not be tolerated.
Entry statuses
Entries that are marked as drafts have missing or incomplete information. The draft status is indicated on the entry’s page. All entries should meet certain requirements before they can be marked as finished/completed. For now these requirements are only suggestions, but in the future they may be enforced more strictly. Of course when editing an entry that meets these requirements, you can still mark it as draft if you feel that the entry needs further attention.
After the entry has been finished it can be approved by a trusted user or staff member. Most properties of approved entries cannot be edited by users with normal permissions. Tags can still be edited by anyone and comments can be added. Trusted users are also able to change the status back from Approved to Finished or even Draft.
A note for trusted users regarding entry approval: You’re encouraged to mark the entry as Approved when you’ve checked that all the necessary information is provided and it’s correct. However, songs shouldn’t be marked as approved until they have lyrics. When approving albums, make sure that ALL the artists have been added.
Language
The official language of the site is English. Please prefer using English for all non-translatable information. For example when adding external links, the descriptions of those links should be in English. Discussions and tags should also be mainly in English. Other languages are allowed with a good reason, for example if a specific piece of information cannot be properly translated into English.
We’re looking into the possibility of allowing other languages in the future, at least for descriptions and discussions.
Names and translations
All names should primarily be written in the original language, which usually means Japanese, but it can also be for example English or Korean. The system supports 4 language options:
*“Non-English” covers original names in all languages that aren’t English or romanized, for example Japanese. *“Romanized” is for foreign original names written in the Latin (western) alphabet. Usually this means Romaji. *“English” is for official names in English and known translations of foreign names. *“Unspecified” is for names where the language doesn’t matter or it’s unknown. Unspecified names will never be used as display names of an entry if another name is provided.
If the original language is English, the name should be written to the English language field, otherwise it’s written to the “Non-English” language field. If those names have commonly used romanizations or English translations, those can be entered as well to make it easier for the international audience to find and understand those names. Other names, for example translations to other languages, should be marked as “Unspecified” according to current rules. Sometimes an entry may have multiple names in one language, for example producer’s real name and artist name. In this case the additional names can be marked as “Unspecified” so that they won’t be used as display names regardless of user’s display option.
Sometimes the Romanization or English name of the artist is always used, even though the artists also has a name in Japanese. In this case the Japanese name should be marked as Unspecified so that it won’t be used as a display name.
If the entry has multiple names in one language and it’s not clear which one of those should be the primary one, you should refer to official information, such as product packaging. If the name in the album’s cover doesn’t conflict with the other rules on the site, that name should be preferred as the primary one.
However, keep in mind that sometimes the official information contains the same name in multiple languages, combined into one. In this case you should enter the name separately for each language. For example, if the song is uploaded to Nico Nico Douga with the name //秘密警察 - Himitsu Keisatsu//, you should enter both names separately: //秘密警察// as Non-English and //Himitsu Keisatsu// as Romanized.
Note: there is an exception to this rule for designating different editions for albums (see: Multiple editions and special albums).
Registered users can set their display language, so that they will always see the names in that language, if available. Unregistered users and users who haven’t set their display language will see the original names, which may be either English or something else. For example, if the non-English name of an artist is ナナホシ, the romanized name is nanahoshi and the default language option is “Original”, then by default users will see ナナホシ unless they have chosen to prefer romanized names instead.
Generally there is no need to add composite names, and those names should broken into separate fields.
For example, cosMo@Bousou-P(暴走P) is incorrect; every field should contain only one name.
Romanization
UtaiteDB uses the same Romanization rules as VocaDB with a few exceptions. For more guidelines regarding Romanization, check the wiki article.
Exceptions for UtaiteDB:
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へ is Romanized as ‘he’ if it is used after the name of a place to indicate direction as a particle.
- E.g. 駆ける、星空の彼方へ would be Romanized as ‘Kakeru, Hoshizora no Kanata he’, the へ is not part of a word and functions as a particle
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を is Romanized as ‘wo’ if it is used after a noun as a direct object particle (90% of the time).
- E.g. 地球最後の告白を would be Romanized as ‘Chikyuu Saigo no Kokuhaku wo’
Artists
Please read the extended guidelines for adding and editing artists.
Artist types
Every artist has a classification which also determines the artist’s default roles. Roles can be overridden per album and per song basis, but in many cases the artist is involved only in one role.
- Utaite - person who primarily sings and uploads covers of Japanese songs (usually VOCALOID songs) on media sharing sites such as Nico Nico Douga, YouTube, and Bilibili.
- Music producer - person who primarily composes and/or arranges songs.
- Animator - person who primarily animates PVs.
- Illustrator - person who primarily draws static illustrations.
- Lyricist - person who primarily composes lyrics for songs.
- Circle - group that self-publishes and sells albums at doujin events.
- Band/unit - musical group composed of vocalists and/or instrumentalists.
- Label - a commercial company that publishes albums for other artists.
- Other group - group that releases albums via Labels.
- Other vocalist - VOCALOID/UTAU/other voice synthesizers and unrelated vocalists who have no strong ties to the utaite community.
- Other individual - other people such as instrumentalists and mixers.
Some individuals are considered to be both equally an utaite and a music producer/other artist type. Since this is UtaiteDB, their main artist type would default to “utaite.”
Albums
Please read the extended guidelines for adding and editing albums.
Album types
The possible album types on UtaiteDB are:
- Original album - Album that consists mostly of previously unpublished songs.
- Single - Contains one or two individual tracks. Alternate versions (instrumentals and remixes) are usually not counted.
- EP - Meaning extended play. Contains 3-4 individual tracks. Alternate versions (instrumentals and remixes) are usually not counted.
- Split album - Collaboration between two or more (but usually just two) equal artists, where all artists have roughly the same number of songs.
- Compilation - Collection of previously published songs, gathered from one or more earlier albums. For example, “best of” collections.
- Video - Disc containing mostly music videos, usually a DVD or Blu-Ray.
- Other - For albums that don’t fit into anything above.
These are only suggestions, use common sense when determining album type. For example, an album with a single song that by itself is as long as a regular album (the definition on Wikipedia says over 25 minutes), can be counted as “original album” instead of single. If unsure of which type to use, try to find out how the artists themselves call the album. For more elaborate descriptions, please refer to Wikipedia, Discogs or Musicbrainz.
Songs
Please read the extended guidelines for adding and editing songs.
Song types
UtaiteDB uses the same song type classification as VocaDB, with some modifications. Please see the wiki entry page for song types.