Submission Rules

This page explains the process of contributing to GothDB and provides guidance in contentious issues. It is by no means exhaustive but should cover most situations. It is highly recommended to join our Discord to discuss your submissions with the moderators, otherwise your submission might not be accepted. If you don't have Discord, you can drop me an email.

Goth band submissions

Eligibility

Important: before submitting an artist, check whether they are already present in the unified goth and non-goth search. This will reveal bands that were either already added to GothDB or were assessed to be predominantly non-goth and blacklisted. If the band page exists but has no albums listed, you have an opportunity to add the albums instead.

A band is eligible to be included in GothDB if it has at least one valid predominantly goth release. A release is considered predominantly goth if at least half of the tracks can be considered to be goth songs (i.e. belonging to one of or a combination of Gothic Rock, Darkwave, Deathrock, Coldwave, and Ethereal Wave). For more information about how GothDB distinguishes between genres, refer to the Genres subsection of the Albums submissions section. Apart from that, the volume of the goth material needs to be substantial enough, which means at least one of the following must be true:

• The band has released at least one predominantly goth full-length album.
• The band has released at least one predominantly goth EP, unless the band has also released a substantial amount of non-goth material, in which case multiple predominantly goth EPs are expected.
• Most of the band's material is goth and it has released at least 4 predominantly goth singles, or a compilation, or a live album. For older bands at least one physical release of any type is enough.

In addition to the genre requirements, we currently do not accept AI-assisted music, so please refrain from submitting such projects.

Making a submission

You can add a new band by pressing Contributions — Add new band. Most of the fields are intuitive, but a few have some caveats:

• Location should be entered from the broadest to most specific category, for example: California, Los Angeles instead of Los Angeles, California. If the band is split between different locations or moved to another place, you can enter multiple locations like this: (United States implied by country) California, Los Angeles / United Kingdom, England, London.
• Relevance is scored from 1 (least significant) to 10 (most significant). It is not a particularly important field and will likely be deprecated at some point, but it is mostly defined by artist's popularity, influence, quantity, and availability of their output.
  • 10 is assigned to the most popular and important artists in goth music, like The Sisters of Mercy and The Cure. It is unlikely you will ever have to use this value.
  • 9 is assigned to very popular artists that significantly influenced their respective subgenres, like Dead Can Dance, Clan Of Xymox, or Fields Of The Nephilim.
  • 8 is assigned to artists that are among the most important and popular in their respective subgenre, or who have around 200 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify or total listeners on Lastfm.
  • 7 is assigned to artists that are quite popular and have around 100-200 thousand listeners.
  • 6 is assigned to artists that have around 40-100 thousand listeners or an extensive enough discography.
  • 5 is assigned to artists that have released at least one full-length goth album which is available on platforms like Bandcamp, YouTube, and Spotify, and is not completely obscure.
  • Scores less than 5 are assigned to bands who are either too obscure/underground, haven't released a full-length album, or whose material is not readily available on convenient platforms.
• All the links need to refer to the artist's personal page. In particular, the Bandcamp page should only feature this artist's material (or related projects in some rare cases), so label links should not be entered here. The linked YouTube channel needs to immediately provide the artist's releases, therefore the auto-generated YouTube "topic" channel should be prioritised unless the official artist page contains their releases. The links should be left blank if there is nothing eligible.
• The photo should ideally have the aspect ratio of around 1.3 with it being wider than it is tall. Vertically long images are discouraged because they will look unfortunate when cropped. The photo should ideally feature the most iconic/full lineup of the band — for example, Christian Death's photo features both Williams and Kand, while Nosferatu's photo features both DeVille and Janicek.
• Notes can contain any miscellaneous information about the artist that will be publicly displayed to the users. For example, lesser-known side projects could contain the information about the members' more well-known ones. The notes could also be used to convey temporary information to the reviewing moderators.

Miscellaneous

• While this is not strictly required, it's encouraged to use the similar artists tab on the band's page to create connections between the newly added band and the already existing ones, helping users discover the band more easily.
• If a band/artist released albums under different names which could be considered to be the same project, only one band page is needed.

Non-goth band submissions

Any artist that is not eligible to be inducted to GothDB can be added as a non-goth one. While there are no strict requirements for this category, please focus on artists that are actually confused for goth, especially if they themselves or other famous content creators and media outlets called them that. If their Bandcamp material has misleading tags, you should link their Bandcamp page (or individual albums if posted by their label). You should also try to think of goth artists that might appeal to the fans of this non-goth band, although it's not strictly required.

Albums submissions

Basic information

After your band submission is approved, you can add their albums using the Edit Albums button on their band page. If you're adding albums for a band that has none listed, your submission needs to include all the relevant albums, partial submissions won't be accepted. If the band's discography is too expansive, you can submit partial drafts and then edit your submission later, adding the missing information. It's a good idea to use the Discogs integration to pull the basic information, submit it and then flesh it out by editing your submission.

Every album needs to have the correct release date (if exact day is unknown, you can put in the first day of the month or the year) and release format. Full-lengths and EPs need to have their genres filled in and have links to Discogs, YouTube, and Bandcamp. The priority for YouTube links is as follows: playlists over whole album videos; official artist playlists over the auto-generated YouTube "topic" ones, over fan uploads. YouTube playlists or videos should only contain the artist's own songs; watch out for the bot-made playlists containing completely unrelated videos. For Bandcamp, individual artist pages take priority over label ones. It's not required (though still encouraged and rewarded) to provide genres and links for the other release types, unless they are very significant in the artist's discography (for example, if they only have compilations or those compilations contain original material not provided by any other releases).

Discogs integration

Instead of copying the data manually, you should use the Fetch missing albums data from Discogs button. You still need to verify that the release types are correct and fill in the other fields (including the genres). Keep in mind that some releases might be missing from Discogs, so you should double-check with Bandcamp, YouTube, and Rate Your Music.

Bandcamp integration

There is an experimental Tampermonkey script that automatically fills in the data from Bandcamp, which is very useful when the album is missing in Discogs. Please join our Discord group for a comprehensive guide on how to install and use it.

Genres

Filling the correct genres for each full-length and EP is the hardest part of making a submission, yet it is necessary to provide accurate and full information to our users. Here are some common principles when it comes to filling the genres:

• You must determine the genres yourself by listening to every album you're assessing, instead of primarily relying on external sources. Experience shows that all of those sources can be wildly inaccurate when it comes to goth music. You can still double check (especially with Rate Your Music, which is the most correct out of the other databases), especially when it comes to the non-goth genres, but the primary source should be your own ears.
• The album should only have a goth subgenre if it is predominantly goth, meaning that at least half of the songs could be considered goth. Intros, interludes, and outros that are shorter than 2 minutes can be excluded from this calculation.
• Each added genre (goth or not) must have a significant presence on the album, meaning at least 30% of songs must have that influence.
• When in doubt, it's a good idea to look up similar albums on GothDB to see what they were labelled as.

Here is a rough overview of the goth genres and some related non-goth ones:

• Gothic Rock is the core/default subgenre of goth music, featuring driving basslines, jangly guitars with abundant effects, heavily processed and sometimes harder-edged guitars, and prominent drums with a strong beat. This tag refers both to the janglier and/or effects-laden type of goth music that owes to the early bands like The Cure and Siouxsie And The Banshees and the harder-edged style that is also known as the second wave of Gothic Rock, heavily influenced by The Sisters of Mercy and Fields Of The Nephilim. Gothic Rock is mostly distinguished from Post-Punk by a darker, more melancholic or mystical sound, more effects on guitars, and sometimes a Hard Rock influence. The borderline sound between those genres should be labelled as Gothic Rock/Post-Punk, while the second wave sound that leans too much on Hard Rock (for example, Nosferatu) should be labelled as Gothic Rock/Hard Rock.
• Darkwave is, in short, a more electronic form of Gothic Rock. The electronic elements are usually reflective of the Synthpop or, sometimes, Industrial influence. Depending on the prevalence of electronic elements, the album can be labelled as pure Gothic Rock (if the electronic elements are minimal and secondary to the rock sound), mixed Gothic Rock/Darkwave, or pure Darkwave. However, a Darkwave album still needs to possess the elements of Gothic Rock/Post-Punk at least in the form of jangly guitars and prominent goth-style basslines. If those elements are diluted, then the album should be labelled as a mixture of Darkwave and another non-goth genre, or as pure Synthpop, EBM, or Industrial, if the goth elements are too marginalized. Darkwave should also not be confused with Ambient or Neoclassical Darkwave, which are not considered to be goth genres.
• Deathrock is a derivative of the early Gothic Rock that developed in the United States and features a heavy Punk Rock influence, usually present in the form of punk riffing and punk-like vocal delivery. It is often faster-paced and features a scratchy guitar tone. Deathrock was formerly used as a label for the American counterpart of Gothic Rock, but in the modern days the country of provenance has no impact on this classification. Depending on the scale of punk influences on the album, it can be labelled as Gothic Rock/Deathrock, pure Deathrock, Deathrock/Punk Rock, or as pure punk if the goth elements are too diluted.
• Ethereal Wave is another derivative of early Gothic Rock that focuses on guitar and vocal-driven atmospheric soundscapes. Compared to regular Gothic Rock, it is mostly softer, calmer, more atmospheric, and slower. It often has high-register female vocals with wordless or glossolallic singing. Ethereal Wave can be hybridized with Dream Pop and Shoegaze, to whose development it contributed, but compared to those it still maintains the hallmarks of the goth genre: prominent basslines, jangly echoey and highly processed shrieking guitars, more prominent drumming, a darker and more melancholic mood, and others. It is often confused with Neoclassical Darkwave and Ambient (like Arcana, Black Tape for a Blue Girl, or later Dead Can Dance), which are outside the scope of this database. Ethereal Wave that features prominent electronic elements should be marked as Ethereal Wave/Darkwave.
• Coldwave is a vaguely defined genre that evolved from the early Gothic Rock/Post-Punk sound. We use this term to either refer to the sound of some early goth European scenes (bands like Asylum Party or Little Nemo) or the modern lo-fi, minimalistic, bass-heavy, and post-punky sound of bands like Lebanon Hanover or Molchat Doma.