Template:BillboardEncode

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Billboard magazine indexes the artists on their website by a number called the artist ID. Each individual artist has a single identification number through which all chart history can be tracked form inside and outside the website. This template is used to support {{singlechart}}, {{albumchart}}, and {{BillboardURLbyName}}.

Internally, it uses forty subtemplates, split by the first character of the artist's name. This prevents the system from needing to load the entire translation table every time the system.

{{BillboardID}} compiles the artists and their respective IDs, and provides the ID when called with a supported artist's name. It is a reasonably complete list (as of 11 February 2012 it includes over 30,000 artists) and anyone can help adding or asking missing IDs to it. This template is a supporting template: 99% of the time, the artists name can be passed to urlencode and the link will be fine. The other 1% are a real problem.

1. Billboard replaces most, but not all, characters that are not in the English alphabet with a "-"
2. Sometimes, Billboard will replace characters that are not in the English alphabet with a replacement that they think looks appropriate.
3. Billboard frequently, but not always, drops "a", "the", "of", "as", and "in" from the URLs.
4. "+" characters frequently mangle the characters around it.
5. The rules are psychotically inconsistent. For example, "Mike + the Mechanics" becomes http://www.billboard.com/artist/1493113/mike-the-mechanics but "Florence + The Machine" becomes http://www.billboard.com/artist/302247/florence-machine

This template is simply an override. It returns the results of urlencode if it will work. Exception cases are listed and a specific string is returned.

Usage

Copy and paste one of the following onto the {{Singlechart}} or {{Albumchart}} templates when calling a Billboard chart, replacing Artistname with the artist whom chart history you are consulting:

• {{BillboardID|Artistname}}
• {{BillboardID|}}

Alternately, it can also be written:

• {{BBID|Artistname}}
• {{BBID|}}