Talk:List of popular music performers

What about merging with list of best-selling music artists? User:Mdob

I suppose it was inevitable, but the new additions to this list have created some problems as far as defining the terms. Take Anthrax, Blue Man Group or Goldfinger -- none of these have ever been very popular mainstream groups, and they certainly never played pure pop music. Tuf-Kat 20:47, Sep 14, 2003 (UTC)

Guidelines for artist disambiguation?

I've been working on some related lists (List of songs whose title includes personal names, List of songs whose title includes geographical names) and would like to recommend to contributors how they might disambiguate links to the song artists. I figured this list would be a good place to ask for guidelines on how best to accomplish this.

I see that adding " (band)" seems to be by far the most common disambiguating phrase for musical groups, but there seems to be quite a variety for individual artists, including " (musician)", " (singer)", and " (rapper)". Other than the obvious desire to label the artist appropriately for their chosen genre, are there any general preferences or suggestions posted anywhere? Any comments from you artist-page creators? Thank you for your assistance. -- Jeff Q 06:28, 30 Mar 2004

I've been using "(drummer)" or "(guitarist)" as appropriate. I expect to make a lot of these disambiguations when I get further into filling the gaps in Australian indie rock. Probably with "(Australian guitarist)" etc as appropriate - David Gerard 21:28, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I've learned in the past two months that it doesn't matter much how one disambiguates such articles, since Wikipedia has no rigid rules and it's easy (with experience) to move things around as needed. I'd suggest not getting too specific with the disambiguations unless necessary. If you create a page for an Aussie guitarist using "(guitarist)" instead of "(Australian guitarist)", and an absent Yank guitarist happens to have the same name, the onus is on the new article creator to first write the material and then worry about reasonable disambiguation. Too much planning ahead might interfere with your highly-desired creative impulse! ☺ -- Jeff Q 21:54, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

POV

Why is the list limited to popular music performers "from United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland", or "of other countries who have become widely known in North America, Great Britain or Ireland"? This region-centric criterion should be removed, or the article should be moved to List of popular music performers in North America, Great Britain or Ireland. Fredrik 00:54, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Seconded - David Gerard 09:47, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree in principle. I suspect the original intent of this article was to provide a list of pop-music performers who are popular in the major English-speaking markets. After all, Kylie Minogue is here, and she's an Aussie. I personally would like to add Astrud Gilberto, who's popular in the US but is from Brazil.

Many articles have a title that is not unique to their domain — e.g., They Might Be Giants — but hold that place because they were there first. The usual Wiki practice seems to be to disambiguate all others except the original or the primary use (depending on whether there is an obvious primary and how much effort Wikipedians wish to devote). I would suggest that this list stand as-is until someone creates a (non-stub) list of worldwide popular music performers, at which point it will deserve this title and the current holder will have to move, either to the title suggested above (which is a bit cumbersome) or perhaps to something like "List of popular music performers (English markets)". Just my 2c. -- Jeff Q 21:39, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Accuracy dispute

Many artists in this list are those I have NEVER heard of. At the same time, many jazz artists I hear of frequently are not listed. Therefore I question the accuracy of this article. Andros 1337 23:35, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

as I understand it this list is about pop music, and so by definition wouldn't include Jazz artists. I don't know if there is an equivalent list for Jazz, if there isn't you may wish to start one. Thryduulf 13:37, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be less a guide to pop music by the genre term and more a guide to it by definition, only. Any band could be considered "popular" by these terms if it just means "Somewhere, some group of people likes it." This list is not accurate in its reflection of what 'pop' really means: The majority of the populace would be familiar with it. I.e. "Mainstream." This includes names that everyone knows. The mega-diva type performers (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, etc.), boy bands (You know who I'm talking about), over played current music, that sort of thing. Pop music is by default a derogatory term that is used by those who know that it is such. People who listen to pop are generally only aware that they listen to "All kinds of music". This is not reflected in the article or list. It should be changed. --Brandyn 00:58, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I took out some red links because obviously they're not very popular if nobody writes up a page on them. 207.224.177.252

Somebody has beaten me to reverting you. There's no reason not to include red links. Regarding the content of this page, there is a difference between popular music and pop music. According to its title, this is a list of popular musicians, and we should use the definition given in that article. I tend to think it is not very useful to have this list; a List of pop performers would be more useful -- however, no such list should be limited to performers from a certain country (unless the list is specifically a list of German pop singers or something), so that should be changed here too. Tuf-Kat 20:17, May 4, 2005 (UTC)

I found this article via Google, and while it loaded, I wondered if it could possibly be as bad as I was imagining. Come on, there is no standard for popularity. Describing any of these musicians/bands as popular is incredibly POV. - Vague | Rant July 6, 2005 02:22 (UTC)

Because of this, I am listing this on vfd. Andros 1337 19:18, 4 September 2005 (UTC)