The Artist Spotlight feature is one of our longest running features which dates back to the first month of our existence in December of 2015.  Like Classic Coverage, it’s a feature though that has seen it’s ups and downs in terms of participation, with much of the production falling into the hands of a few towards the end of its run.  However, it has produced over 200 works, most of which we’ve already brought over into the archives here (save for the work of one of the most prolific authors and a few scattered others).

In the comments of this recent thread, you can actually find the most complete list of them to my knowledge thanks to the tireless work of Troubled By Nouns, of all the artist spotlights on the old site which for various reasons, we will not be reproducing directly here but just know that as long as he never deletes his account, it will always be there.  That being said, we could have sworn feature founder Pucky had more (and earlier) Artist Spotlights and we are sure there are others hidden away or lost forever.

With the new archiving system that actually allows you to more easily find past work, we feel it is time to relaunch this feature as well.  Now’s your chance to talk about your favorite content creators and have your work more visible in the present and be longer lasting to make sure that all that hard work you put into these pays off.

So with all that out of the way, what exactly is Artist Spotlight and why have we shortened the title to Spotlight above? Artist Spotlight was founded by Pucky (taken over by Mexican-American Martian and later Troubled by Nouns) to allows fans to talk about their favorite musicians, put a “spotlight” on their work, and tell us why they are so great and why we should give them a listen.  While musicians and bands have been the prime focus, it has been far from the only focus.

The feature has spread across Books, Games, Movies, Music, and TV and even taken various different focuses in each.  While there have been token efforts to brand them separately in the past, we have made the decision to split them apart to divide the work more accurately into the menu above.  That’s why the emphasis on the base title of Spotlight, as we hope this feature can not only be kick started in its original context of music, but also broadly across the site.

THE NEW CATEGORIES
Actor Spotlight – Actors
Album Spotlight – Albums
Artist Spotlight – Musicians and Bands
Creator Spotlight – Showrunners and the People Behind Television Shows
Designer Spotlight – Games Creators
Director Spotlight – Film Directors
Record Label Spotlight – Record Labels
Scene Spotlight – Eras of Certain Genres of Music
Series Spotlight – Film Series
Video Director Spotlight – A new specialty feature by A Winged Potato which “airs” every alternate Monday, don’t touch
Writer Spotlight – Writers, specifically in books and comics

While the list of those already done may seem intimidating and it would be nice to spotlight new and unique creators especially since we already have write ups about them in the archives, we are not going to require you to pick ones that weren’t done on the old channel.  So feel free to fix up, update, and/or flesh out your own writing or provide a new perspective to the works of those who came before.

Group Therapy will be taking over as the new owner of the feature to oversee things since Troubled by Nouns will be stepping down from the post.  Their job will be to promote the feature, make sure the Spotlights go in the right subcategory, and to help maintain the master list which we have created to help prospective writers find what has been done already. By order of the new management, the old Google Docs form which was used to schedule Artist Spotlights in the past will no longer be used as there is not much concern about overlap going forward.

We will be here rooting for the success of this old, yet expanded feature in the years to come under Group Therapy and we hope that all of you will help make that possible.