How to Increase Discoverability for Musicians Online

Discoverability in the arts means ensuring audiences can find you, your music, your shows, the venues you play with ease. It means positioning yourself online. Unlike search (finding something a user was looking for), discoverability is finding you when a user is looking for someone or something else, but in some way similar to you. To increase discoverability requires that information about you, your band, your music is presented so search engines, and other digital tools, can digest, understand, extract and re-present your information to their users. It means competing more effectively in the digital world.

Search engines, like Google, look for information from a variety of sources. Wikidata is one of them. If you have a Wikidata listing, information about you will come up in Google searches more readily. Other, newer information tools in the live arts, like artsdata.ca, draw on Wikidata for accurate information about the performing arts and concerts.

This guide is focused on Wikidata as a key component in the linked, open data directory eco-system. Wikidata is factual, multi-lingual, open to anyone to edit and use. It, together with adopting “structured data” standards for your own website content, is a powerful avenue to increase your discoverability online.

Importantly, efforts to bring the performing arts and music to the forefront of discoverability are still young. Many folks have not realized the importance of linked, open data. That makes you an early adopter of a proven tool and process!

So go ahead! Use this guide to learn how to improve your digital presence and see the rewards as your career grows.

This guide is part of Home Routes / Chemin Chez Nous’ commitment to lift up and support musicians by using digital tools and processes with purpose, including through the development of Home Routes / Chemin Chez Nous musicians’ listings on Wikidata.

View or download the PDF of Embracing Wikidata: How to Increase Discoverability for Musicians Online 2022