Atlantic Records: one-click web pages

Problem

Atlantic Records' Multimedia Department was responsible, among other things, for assembling the HTML for the label's artist web pages. Each page drew on information spread across departments: biographies from Artist Relations, tour schedules from Tour Marketing, and graphics from the Art Department, plus graphic and sound files created in Multimedia. Their HTML specialist assembled all of it by hand. They suspected there was a more efficient way using databases, and asked TECSoft to recommend and build one.

Solution

TECSoft developed a FileMaker Pro solution that collects information from every submitting department into a single central database. Users enter an artist's biography, release information with song lists and available sound files, and tour dates. In the Multimedia Department, all of an artist's HTML pages are then created with a single button in FileMaker Pro.

The solution uses AppleScript to retrieve image information from Canto's Cumulus database, which catalogs every image used on the site, and to find sound files on disk. Combined with the data in FileMaker Pro, this gives one-click page generation.

Results

The time to produce an artist's HTML fell from a couple of hours to a matter of seconds.

“Using Apple Computer's AppleScript, FileMaker Pro and Cumulus, TECSoft created a database system which allows us to create artist sites for our promotional web site with the click of a mouse. Updates are made to the database and the website is updated by simply regenerating the pages.”

Spokesman, Atlantic Records