We occasionally get e-mails asking as to the progress of Ribcage, the WordPress plugin that runs the back end elements of this site. Progress has been slow, as we have been satisfied using raw MySQL backends to add releases. Yet I can finally show you some screenshots of the beta version of the software I am currently running on my home machine. Hopefully it will show you how easy this software is to use, as well getting some interest from other people who may want to use it in the future. It will, of course, be released under the GPL, open sourced. The intention is that using WordPress, which takes five minutes to install, then grabbing the plugin from the WordPress plugin repository (which anyone can now do within WordPress itself), you could have a working Creative Commons record label up within half an hour. This, we hope, will increase the ease to set up and therefore the numbers of Creative Commons labels across the internet.
Ribcage should be out in the new year to coincide with our two year anniversary, an event that will also be celebrated in a number of other interesting ways! We have a whole load of treats up our sleeves for you.
Photo courtesy of Feathered Tar at flickr.
Adding A Release
We keep all our releases updated on Musicbrainz, as it is the best database and source of discographies around. Ribcage allows you to lookup information about an album from Musicbrainz and bring it into your site.
Ribcage then runs off to Musicbrainz and looks up the release, then asks you if these details are correct. If it isn’t on Musicbrainz, then you have to fill in all these details manually. We are planning to make it possible to suck release data from Discogs.com and Last.fm, though this is a future addition. The idea is eventually you will enter the data once, either on an online database, or in Ribcage, then the data will be propagated throughout.
Then you have to check if the track data is correct.
After this, Ribcage adds the release to the database, and it will appear when the release date set arrives. The debug information shows the level of data actually added in three very simple steps.
You can also add a review of your release once that release is completed. This is almost complete, but not quite.
Artist Management
Adding an artist is even more simple than adding a release. Just fill in the following form.
Managing artists brings up a classic WordPress management table that you can see in the Edit posts form and elsewhere on a standard WordPress install.
Editing an artist is extremely simple. Note that we have automatic fields for website, Facebook and MySpace. We plan to add Twitter accounts into the mix when some of our artists get them!
You can, of course, delete artists as well.
Until Ribcage is released, Bandcamp seems to provide an alternative, though centrally hosted and not open source way of releasing your music, one which we experimented with for the release of To Leave A Mark. ROR artist Spiral Jacobs is also on there. It is really rather good. You can give donations and this kind of stuff, as with Ribcage, and all manner kinds of fancy stuff like that and it is all done very cleanly. Great minds and all that…
