Every show, drop and article on this site carries one of two badges. Wire means The Underplay put it there — a scraper found it, an admin entered it, a feed delivered it. User means a real person, signed in, filled out a form and submitted it for review.
We tag every row so you always know which is which.
This matters more than it sounds like it does. A lot of music-discovery products blur the two on purpose — promoted listings dressed up as editorial, sponsored drops indistinguishable from organic ones, AI-summarised reviews that look like they were written by humans. The Underplay won't do that.
If we surfaced it, you should know we surfaced it. If a user submitted it, you should know they did. Both have value — wire content is what makes the paper feel complete on day one, user content is what makes it feel alive on day two — but they're different things and you should be able to tell them apart at a glance.
Mechanically:
- Shows. A show whose source is anything except submission gets the Wire tag. A show submitted via the band-or-venue form gets the User tag.
- Drops. Wire-added drops (scraper output, admin seeds) get Wire. Public submissions get User.
- Read. Articles authored by an admin account get Wire. Articles pitched by anyone else get User.
Nothing carries both. Nothing carries neither.
The other thing worth saying out loud: when you submit something and we approve it, you become part of the wire too. A user-submitted drop teaches our scraper to watch your Bandcamp for the next one. A user-submitted venue teaches our scraper to read that venue's calendar weekly. The wire isn't a separate system from you — it's the system that grows from you submitting things.
That's the loop. Wire builds the floor. Users build the building.