Curate a list

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

Plain text. Copy this, fill it in, send it over — or just write us a list in an email and we will do the typing.

# 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