I am developing a project and wanted to know how your influences section works? I noticed there is two columns of a dozen or more artists. How are these influences determined, by manual research? Also... how are these artist ordered? By most to least influential down the columns or a different way?
A fun question. Here is some detail.
The connections between artists have been editorially selected, often based on the overall sound of the artist, the genres and styles they are a part of, the scenes they may have been working in, geographic relationships, interviews with bands and musicians, press release material and any other connections that the editor feels makes one artist similar to another.
Specifically regarding "Influenced By," these are hand-assigned by our editors based on information from interviews, established writing and scholarship, and the editor's own familiarity with the artist and their genre. (You don't need a 10,000 word thesis to determine that Gerry & the Pacemakers were influenced by The Beatles).
The layout of the names on the page should be considered weighted from the top down, the ones at the top of the list are the artists that most heavily influenced that musician, ones at the bottom of the list may only have a small connection to the musician's sound or output.
Behind the scenes, the weights are assigned as numbers, so any given musician might have several Influenced By artists ranked '9' (the highest weight), several '8's, several '7's, etc. Within these matching weights, we list the artists alphabetically.
(It's hard to explain using words but if we were to see the weight numbers, it would look like)
Highly Weighted Artist '9' Highly Weighted Artist '9'
Highly Weighted Artist '9' Highly Weighted Artist '8'
Highly Weighted Artist '8' Highly Weighted Artist '8'
Highly Weighted Artist '7' Highly Weighted Artist '7'
Highly Weighted Artist '5' Highly Weighted Artist '4'
Highly Weighted Artist '2'
In our F.A.Q. we give some specific detail:
https://www.allmusic.com/faq/topic/associatedwith
https://www.allmusic.com/faq/topic/collaboratedwith
https://www.allmusic.com/faq/topic/followedby
