Discography => A listing of all recordings which a musician or singer features on can be called their “discography”
Discography is very important to me. The reason, for the ever-Virgo in me, each song in my iTunes should (where humanly possible) be linked to the original album where it was first released. I might have got the song from a later-released “best hits” compilation album but I will not add that to my iTunes as part of that album. I find that the Chinese singers love to release compilations of their best hits and pretty often (Jolin Tsai, 蔡依林, is very famous for this but she is not the only one nowadays).
For extreme cases, I even traced back to the vinyl record (if the album art exists) for some of the really old English songs (think of examples like Nat King Cole, Barry White, Bette Milder, John Denver, Skeeter Davis).
So the discography of an artist is critical as it allows me to identify the VERY FIRST TIME a song has appeared in the “life” of an artist. I then use the information to find the album cover, the year in which it is released and the position number of the song in that album (e.g. song 1 of 10 songs in that album). Sometimes I will compromise if the album cover cannot be found or is of a very inferior quality. I will then go back to the compilation or another (slightly later) album in which the song appeared again.
So which web sites do I use to find discography ?
Earlier on, I recommended Mojim Music Web Site 魔镜歌词网 as a good source of Chinese discography. I like it as it has a very comprehensive list and also has lyrics so I can add lyrics at the same time.
I also find that Wikipedia really good for both English and Chinese singers. Just do a search for the singer and you can probably get a listing of her albums and songs or even a dedicated link to the singer’s discography. As an example, here’s Jay Chou 周杰伦 discography (Jay Chou 周杰伦 discography in Wikipedia). Double click on the individual album and you can get a list of the songs in the album.
Artists’ own fan sites or blogs are good sources too.
🙂 🙂

Related posts:

Recommended Song: 孙燕姿 我不难过 Jason Dunn Album Art Web Site Chinese Album Art Web Site is Ten Years Old