Possibility of including all band releases?

This site is really cool, and I love the idea for it...but one thing that keeps bugging me is continuously seeing certain albums missing from band discographies...

Now I know that it's in the FAQ, and with the way that the clans and genres are set up on here I do understand why it is the way it is, it's a site for METAL, but at the same time some of these discographies having gaping holes is just weird, and has disappointed me so far...sometimes the missing albums are critical releases for a band as well that even metal fan enjoy and hold in high regard, such as Opeth's Damnation, Tiamat's A Different Kind of Slumber,  Alice in Chains's EPs, or pretty much everything by Anathema after Eternity. It could be pretty easy to link these non-metal genres to the appropriate clans, I think. Darkwave, gothic rock, stoner rock to The Fallen; alternative rock, noise rock to The Gateway; hard rock, aor, pop rock,  to The Guardians; various punk genres could be linked to a couple different Clans; we could have a forum discussion on the specifics.

In the end it's up to you guys how want to handle it, and I know you guys are proud of what you've already accomplished here and want it to succeed, and so do I! But I do think it hurts the site just a bit having these particular releases excluded from the site. At the very least we could include these releases in the website, but block them from appearing on the overall charts, to emphasize the importance of the METAL-centric-ness of the site, like what Prog Archives does with non-prog bands that happen to be included on their site. Just my opinion, though!

Firstly, thanks for the feedback. We want this to be a community, so we're super keen to hear about any suggestions people have or things they feel could be better.

We're not opposed to including some of the albums you're talking about. The problem we face is that for every obvious and very noticeable gap (Megadeth's Risk and Opeth's Damnation are good examples), there are bands that have released a huge amount of albums, with only one or two of them actually being metal. Off the top of my head I'll bring up Killing Joke, Nine Inch Nails, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Europe and Krokus. Those 6 bands have about 15 metal releases between them, but I'd have to add over 150 non-metal releases (live, compilations, albums, EPs) to complete their discographies. In every one of those instances, the band released a couple of metal releases decades ago and then went in a different direction for the rest of their career. Daniel and I feel that it's more strange that other sites like Metal-Archives keep adding their releases indefinitely than it is for Metal Academy to stop including them. As much as I love The Gathering, Anathema and Ulver, they've distanced themselves from metal. I can't see us deciding that any band that releases a single metal-related album will be included forevermore.

All that said, we're much more open to including those one-off non-metal albums that sit smack-bang in the discography of otherwise metal playing bands. Risk and Damnation are good examples, and I can think of several traditional folk albums that have been released by bands in The North that wouldn't feel out of place. I don't think anyone would oppose Beherit's Electric Doom Synthesis being included, even though it's a purely electronic release, since it's surrounded by black metal.

We'll sit down and figure out how we might technically include the anomalies. I'd personally like them to not have a clan at all, so you can see them in the band's discography (and rate them) but they won't appear in any clan-based search or charts. I'll just have to figure out how to achieve that. 

I've successfully added this feature. I can now add releases with a genre of Non-Metal and no clan.

If you check out Opeth and Megadeth, you will see Damnation and Risk in their discography. These releases can be found on the Releases page too, as long as your search doesn't include a clan. You can rate them and review them as per normal.

I'll need to come up with a "rule" around which non-metal albums are added and which ones aren't. I'll then need to go back over all the bands I've already added, hunting for releases to meet that criteria.

Cheers,

Ben.

Hey Ben

Love what you've done with the place. A staggering amount of work.

The EPs and singles will probably need to be added  eventually. The NWOBHM alone has so many great ones....

Maybe one day. I decided early on to leave them out for a few reasons. Firstly, there's a lot of confusion around them, with a lot of sites listing completely different things about them. Secondly, it would have resulted in me focusing almost exclusively on 70s and 80s heavy metal for a LONG time with little reward, delaying the true value of the site. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly to me, a lot of them have no artwork or it's next to impossible to find good images for them. As I hope you can tell, the visuals of Metal Academy are just as important to me as the content. I wanted this site to be the best looking metal site there is, and literally spend hours every day hunting down the very best images I can find for every release. I fear that adding singles would detract from the result.

Never say never though.