I just did a post on our Widgetmatic blog about the options music artist have when it comes to building websites, blogs and their online presence. One of these options – the Multi-site – is become a popular option for music artists signed up with major labels such as Warner Music, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI.
Many of these labels have built large multi-site capable of hosting hundreds of artist on the same platform (similar approach to Widgetmatic widget platform hosting hundreds of artist widgets on the same platform) and all of these labels, for the most part, are using a content management system called Drupal, so what gives and what is Drupal?
Drupal is a free open-source content management system written PHP that is used to build robust, personalizeable, content driven websites. In recent years Drupal has been a popular platform in the music industry for building artist websites. Unlike perhaps Wordpress, Drupal is clearly targeted to developers.
Warner Music is a big Drupal user and the company has a multi-site setup that allows each artist site to share the same codebase. This Artist Service Platform (called internally The Platform) powers the websites of Remedy Drive, My Chemical Romance, The Veronicas, Randy Dravis and many others.
Sony BMG Records is also a fairly big Drupal have have put together a Sony BMG Records’ multi-site that host such artists as Daughtry, Kelly Clarkson, Paula DeAnda and others. Sony’s MusicBox community site also runs on Drupal.
We do custom development for both Drupal and Wordpress, so here are some of my thoughts:
- Setup and Management
As an artist here are a couple of things you should know. Drupal is great and power platform but it more easily deployed and managed by large organization (with a decent IT budget and staff) than a “webshop” or much less an individual. If you label doesn’t have a multi-site platform, check out other options.
- Development Customization
For music labels, Drupal is a great way to go (if you have the IT staff). Drupal can be customized (I avoid using the words “easily customized”) through custom themes, its supports multiple-languages and much more. That said, have build custom themes for both Wordpress and Drupal, customizing Drupal is a lot more difficult.
- Usability and Intuitiveness
Probably some will see this as a downside to Drupal and many developers have complained about its learning curve and major releases are not always backward compatible, ouch! This is more a problem for the label than for the artist since if you are using a multi-site, chances are someone else is responsible for keeping it updated.
Alternative Technologies:
Most people will agree that Drupal is clearly more powerful than Wordpress (and other pure blogging solutions) given that it is a true CMS, but given the cost and complexity that come with Drupal, it definitely isn’t the best solution for everyone. So know your many options.
- Wordpress and Blogs
Wordpress is a PHP-based blogging platform and is probably the biggest single contender to Drupal in this area. It is also probably the best option for any artists who owns and operates their own website (directly or through a website provider). It takes a little know-how and a lot of plug ins (plus a good custom theme) but running an artist website on Wordpress if perfect fine and acceptable (and great for SEO purposes). For example, the Widgetmatic website runs on Wordpress and we have build dozens of custom wordpress plugins to enhance “website” functionality for clients who use run their site on Wordpress.
- Joomla
Joomla is yet another content management system or CMS. Personally I have not seen it used a lot in the music industry but I heard it can be done and there are event stories out there of people who have done it. Some claim Joomla is faster than Drupal, but there are ways to to improve Drupal’s performance considerably via caching and compression. Overall, Joomla seems a bit dated – just an opinion.
- Ning
Ning is not software but an online community. I would consider Ning more a community site builder than a website builder. A number of music labels have been using Ning (in conjunction to their websites) as a community builder (ThisIs50.com, T.I., Good Charlotte). Ning is (somewhat) customizable and many of the artists and labels I have spoken to seem to like the level of community activity they see on Ning.
- Other Third Party Communities
Many of these exist. Usually the true purpose of these “platforms” is to build some sort of music community, so they are open to giving away their services and bandwidth to artist in exchange for building a more “cohesive” community around the artist. These includes communities like Buzznet (Britney Spears), Zoecity (TobyMac), and others.
Be sure to check out Widgetmatic’s: Artist.com: What Platform Should I Build my Web Site On for a whole list of website development options!
