OpenMusic: connecting music artists and fans

Relative data structures

To begin with, the main idea here is:

• All users have a singular userprofile nodeprofile node, that holds their profile information.
• All artists have a singular artistprofile nodeprofile node that simultaneously is an organic group node. This gives the ability to each artist to hold subscribers. More about that later!
• Each music band is also an organic group node holding subscribers.

more information about profile information in OpenMusic can be found at OpenMusic: user registration & profile information

Why should bands and artists be organic groups instead of simple users, and why do they need subscribers?
Well, I began by thinking about how bands are implemented in social networks such as myspace. Each band is in essence a user, solely responsible for managing the web area of the band, having all the rights to create/edit content. Should another trusted person be called to administer the band’s pages, he needs to be given all login information.
Setting aside the fact that this creates serious security and trust issues, let’s consider the fact that bands are not themselves persons, they are groups of people – consisting of single persons. New people join them, existing people leave them. They should be treated as such in their digital manifestation, if that makes any sense.

Moving on to Drupal’s implementation of user groups – organic groups, and my take on how bands and artists should be realized in OpenMusic, bands as organic groups can hold subscribers. Let’s call these subscribers fans. Fans can be given access control to either view or create/edit content belonging to the organic group, in essence opening the door to unprecedented freedom for collaboration between bands and fans as I will explain later on. Now comes the interesting part. Categorizing fans not by taxonomy but by access roles, allows the organic group creator to give real roles to his band’s subscribers (e.g. bandmanager, bandmember, graphicartist, photographer, videoartist) in reality giving them rights to create/edit specific content depending on the role they have.

An example: Suppose we have a bunch of content types for our band-organic groups: audio nodes, image nodes, event nodes etc. If we create three access roles for example, one for each content type, say:

• band_member - can create and edit own audio nodes in the organic group
• band_graphic_artist - can create and edit own image nodes and
• band_manager - can create and edit own event nodes

and give out these roles to respective subscribers, we have in essence provided a means for our fans to take on a role in the band “business”. Fans that have no role in the organic group are simply fans, while the rest are people that the band needs to carry out tasks. Their access role defines their real role in the band business. In a further update we will be talking about what roles fans can and should be able to take.

To summarize, until now I’ve explained why bands should be implemented as organic groups and what functionality we gain by doing so. But why should fans be involved in the band business, why would they, and what do we gain by following that practice? Truth is, I have seen fans setting aside their rent paying job to come and help the band stick posters, design the website, administer myspace, setup gigs and give them clothing/haircut advice or even go shopping with them. Imagine all that organized by a layer of band-control, using OpenMusic as the command center. Things that should be done by the Recording companies - at a price of course – OpenMusic helps bands get them for free. But why would fans want to get involved in all that? Because this is a way to pay back for what bands give to the people - Music. It’s a new way of paying for music, and if we agree with the prediction that one day music will be free and musicians will only earn money from concerts, this is perhaps a viable alternative way to be paid something back instead of nothing. It is barter exchange for music, a call to consciousness for paying back with service instead of money. And we can all spare some free time for our favorite band.

Fan Crew roles

Hereby follows an early list of roles to be assigned to organic group subscribers. Most propositions are not self explanatory, I hope this will be fixed soon.

Music and recording

• music composer
• lyricist
• sound engineer
• openstudio mentor
• rehearsal administrator

Management and promotion

• artist/band manager
• advertiser
• social network editor
• radio/tv ambassador
• live concert ambassador
• street team zealot

Creative and image

• graphic/web artist
• copy editor
• video artist
• photographer
• clothing consultant
• haircut consultant

Issues to be discussed

• The pitfalls of getting fans to band business