Features

This is a list of planned features for Dbasr 1.0 and an explanation of each. This isn’t a full list, and you can very much consider it an RFC (request for comments); add ‘em below. This document will probably change a lot, so keep checking back on it!

News/Blog

The news/blogging engine for Dbasr is going to be relatively simple, compared to something like WordPress; my experience as both a musician and from looking at artists’ pages is that they don’t need the complex taxonomies and archive structure that a lot of blog tools provide. Posts can be categorized into multiple categories, of course, and possibly taggable, but not much beyond that.

The comments system is also going to be pretty simple; artists can choose to make commenters register or use something like OpenID or Facebook Connect to post, or turn off comments altogether.

The post editor is a rich text editor, and will allows uploads, but in a slightly different way than WordPress does; an upload will be dumped into the main structure for whatever media type it is, as well as added to a playlist or gallery called ‘Uploads’. For example, if a user uploads photos, those photos will be treated like any other images that are added using the “formal” Image tool, but the user can choose to show or hide uploaded images within the Image/Gallery browsing area of the site.

All posts can be syndicated using RSS, and can also be pinged out to aggregator sites (see “pingback” section below.)

Gigs

A gig can be a live show, a recorded performance, a residency, or what-have-you. It’s a temporal, spatial event; something that happens at a specific place and time.

Gigs include the following (* denotes a required field):

• A title *
• A venue *
• A category (live show, TV appearance, release party, etc.)
• A start date and time *
• An end date and time
• A street address
• A city and state
• A postal code if applicable
• A description
• A flyer image
• An age limit (all ages, 18+, 21+, etc.)
• A cover charge

Artists can choose to show a Google Map of each show as well.

In addition, media can be semantically linked to gigs. For example, if an artist makes a live recording of a gig, she can add that audio file to her site and link that audio to the gig. When someone browsed a list of her gigs and clicked on that specific gig, the audio would appear on the gig page. Same thing with images, video, etc. This allows artists to document their live performance very easily.

Like news, events can be syndicated and pinged out to external sites. I’d also like to make them subscribable via iCal or Google Calendar or Outlook or whatever.

(An aside: I know a lot of people might not like the “gig” nomenclature. I might change it to Events if enough people say something, but I like the informality of “gig”.)

Audio/Video

For musicians, audio and video aren’t just file attachments; they’re important chunks of data. So when a user adds audio and video to their Dbasr site, they’ll be able to add a lot of metadata:

• title *
• genre
• artist
• lyrics
• credits
• description
• recording date
• license
• category

Why an “artist” field? Because I want Dbasr to be useful not only for individual artists, but MP3 bloggers, net.labels and artist management teams as well.

Audio and video can also be linked to songs and albums — not just individual audio or video, but multiple files. For example, let’s say Your Band has a song called “I Love You, Brock Sampson”. There could be several versions of “I Love You, Brock Sampson”: a studio recording, a demo version, three live recordings, and a music video. Each of these can be linked to the song’s entry in the discography.

And of course, audio and video can be added to playlists.

Images

Images can be uploaded and sorted into galleries (more on that in a minute). They can be given the following metadata:

• Title
• Description
• Credit
• License
• Category

Images can also be associated with events and news.

Playlists

Audio and video can be organized into playlists, which can include both types of media. A playlist doesn’t really have metadata beyond a title and optional description, but it can be linked to a gig or an album. For example, if Your Band recorded an entire show and chopped the recording up into individual songs, they could make a playlist for that gig (which would automatically be given a title of “{Show Title} – {Date} – {Venue}”) that would appear on the gig’s page.

Playlists can also be associated with albums, being — obviously — the contents of that album.

Playlists can be embedded in any Dbasr page. I’m trying to work out an HTML 5-only solution for making playlists; right now, the only real way I can figure out how to play audio/video inline is using Flash. It might be a moot point, though, as mobile Safari and other devices don’t at the moment allow you to embed media within a page and play it directly; Safari, at least, opens the media file itself to playback within its media player.

Galleries

Image galleries contain images. They include:

• Title
• Description
• Visibility (public/internal)

Galleries, being basically lists of images, are also used to store album covers (front and back and optional image-based liner notes). They can also be associated with gigs (see above).

An “internal” gallery doesn’t get displayed in the regular gallery list. It’s for things like album covers, etc.

Songs

Songs are not audio. They’re songs. A song has:

• a title
• lyrics
• credits
• description
• license

Why not genre? Because a song doesn’t have a genre; a recording of a song has a genre. John Denver and Toots and the Maytals both do “Take Me Home, Country Roads” but Denver’s original version is folk-country and Toots’ version is rock-steady reggae.

Songs can be linked to audio, video and albums, as part of an album’s tracklist.

Albums

Albums are collections of songs. They include the following:

• Title
• Description
• Year
• Credits
• Tracklist
• Playlist
• Cover(s)
• Liner Notes

Albums don’t have a license because the individual songs each have their own license. The tracklist is simply a list of the songs on the album. The playlist is a list of the individual audio recordings of each song that makes up the album.

The covers are the front (and optionally back) covers of the album, which are images that get stored in a gallery called “{Album Name} Covers” that isn’t displayed by default in the gallery list.

The liner notes for an album can be in any format the artist wants, including executables or things like Flash SWF files for interactive liner notes.

Contacts

Contacts are an artist’s professional contacts — booking agents, A&R people, music journalists, etc. A contact has:

• First name
• Last name
• Title
• Company
• Email
• Work Phone
• Mobile Phone
• IM screenname
• Address
• City
• State
• Postal
• Country
• Notes
• Category

Artists can select any or all professional contacts to send mailing list messages to.

Subscribers

Subscribers are people who subscribe to an artist’s Dbasr site (obviously). This means they can choose to be notified by email of any subset of an artist’s data stream: news posts, audio, video, images, gigs, new items in the store, etc. In the case of gigs, subscribers can choose to only be notified of gigs within X miles of their location. This bypasses the irritating thing that sites like MySpace and Facebook do where you get an email that says “The Hong Kong Cavaliers are playing a show in Poughkeepsie tonight! Come on down!” and you’re like “Dude, I’m in San Jose. Quit bugging me.”

Artists can also choose to make any Dbasr content (from news posts to store items) available only to subscribers. This provides incentive for people to subscribe, because subscribers = demographics for artists.

Anonymity is going to be an issue here, of course; not everybody will want to make their info available to artists. Maybe hide actual email addresses from the artists or something? I’m not sure.

Store

The built-in Dbasr store allows the user to select any item as available for sale. Making an item available for sale does not automatically make it unavailable for free access — for example, making an audio file for sale doesn’t remove it from playlists or embeds within the site.

Each item in the store can be sold for a fixed price or for a pay-as-you-like price, with an optional minimum. Items can also be automatically zipped for delivery.

I’m currently working out the feasibility of using a service provider like Kunaki to be able to deliver actual CDs and other real-world items; check this space for more details.

The store will keep a list of each transaction, as well as emailing the artist when there’s a sale. There will be a basic “customer support” system that allows artists to deal with sale conflicts.

Pinging/Sharing Content

An artist will be able to share and send content-type-specific “pingbacks” to external sites whenever they add or edit content. This is similar to most blogging software’s ability to ping sites like Technorati.com when they’re updated, except that each type of content will have its own specific microformat for exporting/sharing/pinging data. For example, if an artist chooses to send a new album release to Dbasr.com, it will be sent in an XML format that might look like this:

<album title="Welcome To My World Of Hell" artist="Red State Soundsystem" date="03-14-2011">

<image url="http://www.redstatesoundsystem.com/albums/covers/08_front.jpg" />

<image url="http://www.redstatesoundsystem.com/albums/covers/08_back.jpg" />

<tracklist>

<track title="Who Loves The Sun?" url="http://www.redstatesoundsystem.com/albums/songs/who_loves_the_sun" />

<track title="I Love You, Brock Sampson" url="http://www.redstatesoundsystem.com/albums/songs/i_love_you_brock_sampson"/>

<track title="Lady Madonna" url="http://www.redstatesoundsystem.com/albums/songs/lady_madonna" />

<track title="You Get The Idea" url="http://www.redstatesoundsystem.com/albums/songs/you_get_the_idea" />

</tracklist>

</album>

Similar microformats can be built for events, individual songs, playlists, etc.

Dbasr.com is going to serve as an aggregator for all of this data from Dbasr artists, but I plan to make an open API so that any site can aggregate content.

Importing/Exporting Data

I’d like users to be able to import news posts from WordPress, contacts from Outlook or Google Mail or whatever, etc. It’d be really cool if an artist could export a playlist directly from iTunes into Dbasr — maybe like a plugin where an artist could send both an XML playlist and audio files directly from iTunes to their Dbasr site.

More information to come!