# Curate a list

We publish lists by people whose ear is worth borrowing. Here is exactly what that involves, before you spend an hour on it.

## What we commit to

- **Your picks, your reasons.** A record with no reason attached is a playlist, and the internet has those. Every pick needs a sentence only you could write.
- **A selection, not a ranking.** We will never print a position against your picks. Order them how you like; the order carries no claim about which is best.
- **We edit, you approve.** We transcribe, check every fact, and copy-edit for house style. Nothing goes up until you have seen it as it will appear.
- **One page, yours.** Your list lives on your artist page, at one URL, alongside the records of yours we already rank. Ask us to take it down and we will.

## What we need from you

- **One list per genre.** Send a house list and a techno list rather than one list of everything. Each gets its own heading and its own framing on your page, and you can add another whenever you like without touching the first.
- **Ten picks is plenty.** Per list. There is no minimum beyond one and no maximum; ten to forty is where most land.
- **The genre is your word, not ours.** Call it broken beat, or bruk, or nothing at all. Where your word matches one of our rankings we link the two; where it does not, we publish yours as you wrote it.
- **Each note runs 40–400 characters.** Long enough to be a real verdict, short enough to stay a verdict rather than an essay. This is the part people come for.
- **A short bio, 60–400 characters.** Who you are and why your ear is worth borrowing. Plus a link, if you have one.
- **A brief for each list, 40–300 characters.** What that particular list is. Your framing of it, not ours.
- **Never guess a platform ID.** Omit any of spotifyId, youtubeId, playlists.spotify, playlists.youtube, coins[].id, isrc you are not certain of and we will resolve it. A wrong ID produces a confidently broken link, which is worse than no link at all.

## The file

```yaml
# Your lists for Waxonia. Two kinds of file — one for you, and one for
# each list you send. Email them to curate@waxonia.com.

# ── curators/<your-name>.yaml ─ you, once, however many lists you send ──

name: Your Name
bio: >-
  Who you are, and why your ear is worth borrowing. 60–400 characters.
link: https://example.com          # optional

# ── selections/<your-name>-<genre>.yaml ─ one file per list ─────────────

curator: your-name                 # the filename of your curator file
genre: Deep House                  # optional, and your word — omit for a general list
brief: >-
  What this list is. Your framing of it, not ours. 40–300 characters.
accent: 210                        # a hue, 0-360; every value works
updated: 2026-08-28                # the day you finished it

picks:
  - title: Inner City Life
    artist: Goldie
    year: 1994
    label: FFRR / Metalheadz        # optional
    note: >-
      Why you reach for this one. A real verdict, not a placeholder —
      40–400 characters.

  # Repeat for each pick. No rank field: the order carries no claim.
  #
  # Optional, and only if you are certain — omit and we will resolve them:
  #   spotifyId: the 22 characters after open.spotify.com/track/
  #   youtubeId: the 11 characters of the v= parameter in a YouTube URL
  #   playlists.spotify: the 22 characters after open.spotify.com/playlist/
  #   playlists.youtube: the value of the list= parameter, e.g. PLFgquLnL59alW3xmYiWRaoz0oM3H17Lth
  #   coins[].id: 6 characters of lowercase base32 — digits and letters, with i, l, o and u removed. Minted by `npm run coins:mint`, never typed
  #   isrc: the International Standard Recording Code, e.g. GBAYE9400123
```

Send it to curate@waxonia.com.