Talk:PeopleSound

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the PeopleSound article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

PeopleSound has been listed as one of the Engineering and technology good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: November 30, 2022. (Reviewed version).

A fact from PeopleSound appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 January 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that PeopleSound was Europe's most visited music streaming site in 2000, and had offered any artist £100 for each song they uploaded?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/PeopleSound.

Wikipedia

This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Companies Low‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Companies, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of companies on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CompaniesWikipedia:WikiProject CompaniesTemplate:WikiProject Companiescompany

Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Companies To-do:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Wikipedia:Requested articles/Business and economics/Companies
Assess : Category:Unassessed company articles
Copyedit : Category:Company articles needing attention
Infobox : Category:Company articles needing infoboxes
Maintain : Portal:Companies
Stubs : Help expand stub articles located at Category:Company stubs
Other :
- Tag company articles with the {{portal|Companies}} template
- Tag company talk pages with the {{WikiProject Companies}} project banner
- Answer requests for comments

Computing: Software Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Computing, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of computers, computing, and information technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ComputingWikipedia:WikiProject ComputingTemplate:WikiProject ComputingComputing
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Software (assessed as Mid-importance).

Media Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Media, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Media on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MediaWikipedia:WikiProject MediaTemplate:WikiProject MediaMedia

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Media To-do List:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Cleanup : Media influence, Video game culture, Sound bite
NPOV : Content (media and publishing)
Verify : Multimedia, Alternative media, Alternative newspaper
Other :
- Answer requests for comments

Music theory Low‑importance

	Music portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Music theory, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of music theory, theory terminology, music theorists, and musical analysis on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Music theoryWikipedia:WikiProject Music theoryTemplate:WikiProject Music theoryMusic theory
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

GA Review

Passed. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 05:11, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This review is transcluded from Talk:PeopleSound/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sammi Brie (talk · contribs) 01:32, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
· · ·

There are a lot of copy issues as well as reference formatting issues. Please pay some attention to the metadata on your references, as it is lacking in quite a few places. 7-day hold to SerAntoniDeMiloni; ping me when done. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 07:04, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Copy changes

"CinS" means to consult User:Sammi Brie/Commas in sentences.

Items article-wide:

There are many single quotes where there should be double quotes. Per MOS:DOUBLE, Most quotations take double quotation marks.
Per MOS:CURRENCY, million and billion should be spelled out on first use, and (optionally) abbreviated M or bn (both unspaced) thereafter: She received £70 million and her son £10M; the school's share was $250–300 million, and the charity's $400–450 M. I'd opt for writing out "million" in each use.
I wonder if some of the quote use can be reduced in areas. Some of the promotional quotes are overused.

Lead

Capitalize "European", sentence 2. Remove the comma as unneeded.
music by artist or category, and discover new recommended music The part after the and, "discover new recommended music", is not a sentence on its own, so remove the comma after "category" (CinS).
PeopleSound raised at a valuation of $200m (£70m in 1999), and reached a valuation of $280m (£100m in 1999) Remove comma (CinS)

History

28 year old hyphenate as an adjective: "28-year-old"
Schmitt had been a Boston Consulting Group Management Consultant, but had no music industry experience Remove comma (CinS)
In September 1999, pre-launch, PeopleSound was valued at £12m, had 35 employees and 4-500 scouts. There are some awkward structure issues. I wasn't sure if "4-500" meant "between 4 and 500" or "400 to 500". In September 1999, pre-launch, PeopleSound was valued at £12 million and had 35 employees and 400–500 scouts.
Several paragraphs do not end with a citation. I'd like to see citations for these.
It ranked in the top ten most popular entertainment sites, and one of the highest profile tech startups in the UK, with Les Echos (France) naming Schmitt 'one of the elite figures of the London Net-economy' and Zdnet as 'one of the UK's better known Web entrepreneurs'. Awkward length. Change to It ranked in the top ten most popular entertainment sites and as one of the highest-profile tech startups in the UK; Les Echos named Schmitt "one of the elite figures of the London Net-economy", while ZDNet declared him "one of the UK's better known Web entrepreneurs".
The deal with Amazon allowed their users to purchase music direct from PeopleSound artists, and allowed the platform to scale up their audience. Remove comma (CinS)
The deal was the first European collaboration of new media and old media, and allowed PeopleSound Remove comma (CinS)
"October 2020", presumably 2000?
Write out "one quarter"
The pan-European digital music company listed on Milan's Nuovo Mercato stock exchange, was interested in PeopleSound which had nearly sold to Terra Lycos earlier in the year Add a comma after "company" and another after "PeopleSound" to complete the appositives
"top three" instead of "top 3"
The deal made the joint entity one of the top 3 largest music platforms on the web, and left PeopleSound shareholders remove comma (CinS)
The combined acquisition joined arch-rivals, and gave the company Remove comma (CinS)
Hyphenate "mid-2000"

Business model

The 'PeopleSound Contract' allowed artists to send their finished product to PeopleSound, and then famously granted them a non-exclusive world-wide license for £100. Remove comma (CinS)
Is "renintermediating" a typo? (re-intermediating, maybe?)

Sourcing and spot checks

Many references need better metadata or cleanup. For instance:
- Quite a few refs are missing author info. For instance, "MP3.com Europe won't include signature services" was written by Michael Learmonth. The title can be pared down from "CNN.com - Technology - MP3.com Europe won't include signature services - September 21, 2000".
- Ref [14] should have "International Herald Tribune" as its work and via=New York Times.
- The 01net source cites rédaction, La — a staff writer byline that can be removed.
- Some refs could be consolidated, e.g. 2 and 11, 12 and 18, etc., if quotes were removed.

Earwig doesn't turn up any percentages of concern, but I do think some passages need rewording: exclusive free music provider for Sonera's global wireless portal, Zed in particular.

Of the 51 references on the page, I selected 7 for spot checks. They all check out.

2, 5, 14, 17, 18, 32, 37

2 (BBC Company File): Unsure what it's used for here, maybe Schmitt's age, but it checks out.
5 (ZDNet): Checks out. I do note that quotes like this one should be reworded as they are not company prose but actually written.
14 (IHT/NYT): Schmitt's mention of "infancy" but that it was the leader among Europe-based sites.
17 (Les Echos): Describes Schmitt as un consultant en management de 29 ans qui fait partie des figures de l'élite de la Net-économie londonienne. Seems like it's been translated faithfully, too.
18: ZDNet quote checks out.
32 (La Repubblica): Mentions the 34 million euro purchase price. (Not sure what the specific use is given the number of refs here.)
37 (San Francisco Business Times): Notes 19-percent stake in Vitaminic that PeopleSound shareholders received.

Other items

The two images are an NFUR website image from 1999 and the NASDAQ graph. I suggest adding alt text to both images.

Response

Many thanks @Sammi Brie:! Really detailed review, and I was left with lots to work on. Apologies for taking slightly longer to respond – this review coincided with when I was away :) I believe I've addressed all of the above, and have tried removing some of the in-line quotes (but let me know if still too many).

I will also note that I haven't merged all of the citations with multiple incidences as doing this would lose some of the individual quotes viewable when clicking on the citation. Let me know what you think. Many thanks, SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk) 21:37, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed one more issue by finding the original Management Today piece in ProQuest and citing it instead of a guy's LinkedIn. (They were named one of several Most Visionary Companies in different categories.) This is finally ready to pass. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 05:08, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 01:06, 15 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

... that PeopleSound was Europe's most visited music streaming site in 2000, and had offered any artist £100 for each song they uploaded? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/business/worldbusiness/IHT-mp3com-says-it-is-looking-to-europe-for-expansion.html , https://edition.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/09/21/mp3.com.europe.idg/index.html , https://www.theguardian.com/media/2000/sep/21/newmedia
- ALT1: ... that PeopleSound was Europe's most visited music streaming site in 2000?
- ALT2: ... that PeopleSound used grassroots marketing to grow, such as using 150 people to find bands across the country?
- ALT3: ... that PeopleSound was the first music streaming site in Europe, having started seven years before Spotify?

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/418296.stm

- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Elcho Castle
- Comment: Don't exactly know how to word these hooks.

Improved to Good Article status by SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke (talk) at 18:01, 2 December 2022 (UTC).[reply]

@Onegreatjoke: Article was promoted to GA status within seven days of nomination, is long enough and is neutral. QPQ done. I'm a bit concerned about the number of lengthy quotes= in the citations from a WP:COPYVIO perspective, especially with regard to the Sound on Sound source. Unless the source is behind a paywall or offline, it's excessive to have entire sentences quoted in this manner, and I would recommend abridging some to their bare essences with ellipses (...). DigitalIceAge (talk) 01:47, 18 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback i'll also ping @SerAntoniDeMiloni: since he was the one who made it into a good article to see if he can help. Onegreatjoke (talk) 15:46, 19 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Onegreatjoke:@DigitalIceAge: Thanks for the ping, and apologies for taking a while. I've had a little look and am still a little conflicted. I was of the understanding that copyvios only counted for quotes in-line, and that citation quotes, so long as directly relevant, could be used. I have decreased the size of the soundonsound quotes, though. Let me know. SerAntoniDeMiloni (talk) 11:53, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@SerAntoniDeMiloni: Oops! My apologies, forgot this ping. (Thanks to @BlueMoonset: for reminding me.) I suppose that if directly paraphrased content is quoted and nothing else, then it should be okay to leave it in. I'll leave discretion to the promoting nominator. Approve ALT0 and ALT1 as most interesting. DigitalIceAge (talk) 21:00, 14 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]