On Wednesday (February 18), Mike Hadreas, the artist better known as Perfume Genius, posted a desperate plea on X: “Can someone please change my Wikipedia pictures? How do you do it? It’s haunted me for years.” What was then his artist photo dated back nearly a decade to 2017. (Hadreas’ frequent collaborator Blake Mills also caught a stray).
Musicians have long suffered in silence at the capricious whims of Wikipedia editors. Artist photos on the site are almost always out of date, unflattering, or both. And Hadreas isn’t the only one speaking up. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is apparently locked in a cold war with one user who keeps swapping out the photo on her page. In a new TikTok, Larsson addressed the rogue editor directly, vowing that “I will never stop changing that picture to a nice one. I will never stop.”
Larsson’s page—like those of many high-profile artists—falls under what’s called extended confirmed protection, which restricts public editing. So while Hadreas was able to enlist one of his X followers to do away with what he called the “corpse in red lipstick,” Larsson would have required the assistance of a high-level Wiki user (someone who’s made at least 500 edits) or site administrator.
Whether you’re a musician who cringes every time you Google yourself or a stan who knows your fave deserves better, here are several ways to change an artist photo on Wikipedia. Just be sure the image is freely licensed, which means you either took the picture yourself or you have the express permission of whoever took it.
Via Social Media: Post a suitable picture on Instagram, X, Facebook, or another social media platform with a licensing statement in the caption. The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0) ensures that you’re still credited in all future uses. Or you can cite Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication 1.0 to release the photo completely into the public domain.
Via Email: Submit a suitable picture via photosubmission@wikimedia.org, alongside a statement confirming that you own the copyright on the image and a specific licensing agreement (Wikipedia recommends CC BY-SA 4.0. If you don’t own the copyright to the photo you want to use, whoever owns the rights—usually the photographer, unless ownership has been transferred—should send in the release statement instead.
Via Wikimedia Commons: Start by creating a Wikimedia Commons account, or logging in to Wikimedia Commons with a pre-existing Wikipedia account. Click “Upload file” on the left-hand menu, and fill out the upload form. Once you’ve uploaded a suitable picture, you can crop it and add a caption. Go to the page you want to update and click “Edit” in the top-right corner. In the edit window, look for “Infobox musical artist,” then delete whatever’s listed under “image.” Replace that text with the file name of the photo you uploaded, then scroll down and click “Publish changes.” (To be a good Wikipedia samaritan, you should also write an edit summary describing what you changed and why.)
Via the Talk Page: Click “Talk” in the top left corner of the artist page. Go to “Add topic,” and make a post with the subject “Photo Edit Request.” Link out to another suitable picture anywhere else on the web, confirm that you’re the rights holder, and include one of the above licensing agreements. Help should soon be on the way.