Articles by thomas

I’ll be giving my DJ Edna and Django presentation at the next MinneBar BarCamp on Saturday, May 10th, 2008. So, for those of you that didn’t brave the snowstorm to see me give the presentation (for the first time) at the March 2008 Ruby Users of Minnesota meeting, this is your chance.

This will be my first BarCamp and I’m excited to see what all my developer friends have been raving about.

It’s been a while since I updated everyone on the status of the DJ Edna project source. I’ve been working on significantly streamlining the installation process and performing a refactoring that will make it easier to incorporate DJ Edna functionality into existing Django sites. I’ve also been working on adding Satchmo integration to provide e-commerce functionality for digital products and physical merchandise. One of the great things about the Satchmo Project is that it comes out of the box with rich support for selling physical items (e.g. t-shirts) including shipping and tax calculations, invoices, shipping labels, product variations (e.g t-shirt sizes/colors), multiple payment processors, gift certificates, and discount codes. I only had to add support for purchasing DJ Edna digital access permits (i.e. the access you currently get when you redeem a code) which, after a couple of weeks of digging through the Satchmo source code, was easier than I thought it would be.

But e-commerce integration isn’t complete yet. While modifying the default Satchmo templates to allow for “Permit Products,” it became clear that the existing DJ Edna views and templates were getting a little long in the tooth. So, like any over-ambitious software architect, I’ve begun a brand new set of views and templates that will correct many of the deficiencies and properly separate the core functionality of the DJ Edna catalog system from presentation-level functionality. This should make creating custom DJ Edna installs even easier.

Finally, when this work is complete, I’ll begin a refactoring of the core catalog models paying special attention to breaking out expensive operations (i.e. scanning a catalog for new tracks) into non-web processes connected to the webapp via a persistent work queue. This should pave the way for a simplified track upload process.

Once all that work is complete, I’ll be tempted to tag a 1.0 release and move on to some more exciting functionality focused around creating and keeping True Fans. More on that in a future post as the current refactoring projects come to a close.

A couple of updates:

• Part 3 of Sympathy for the Devil: The Plight of the Record Industry is up. scrivener looks at the various reasons “experts” cite for the problems of the recording industry and the solutions they have proposed.
• You can hear me blather on about DJ Edna and the future of the music industry on the First Crack Podcast (hint: it has something to do with digital distribution). I haven’t listened to it yet because, well, it’s my voice and I’m not a rock star. So, if you happen to listen, let me know how I sounded in the comments.
• DJ Edna was written up on the Minnov8 Blog.
• I’ll be giving a presentation on developing DJ Edna with Django to the Ruby Users of Minnesota meeting on March 31, 2008.
• After some brainstorming regarding payment models, I’ve begun another refactoring (this is #4) of the DJ Edna store application. This work is aimed at making the payment model less like a traditional “pay-first” web store and something closer to “bill me later.” I’ll blog more about this new functionality in a future post.
• Two bands, Scatic and Homo Jenkins, have recently contracted with djedna.com to build and host DJ Edna powered web sites.

Over on the Phree Musique Blog¹, scrivener (a friend and also the genius behind SpiritOfSalt and the Song A Day project) has started a multi-part analysis of the disintegration of the “record industry.” In keeping with his honorary, self-appointed title as “visionary” he eloquently and completely lays out a little history and the opportunities the industry missed in their zeal to keep their “plastic disc” retail business model viable.

Part 1 is a prologue to his arguments and starts off by quoting at length from a recent speech by longtime U2 manager, Paul McGuinness where he lays out a dreadful future “solution” for the industry that consists of ISPs spying on user’s activities and becoming the copyright cops. I think scrivener makes an astute observation about the initial sentence from Mr. McGuinness speech:

What I’m trying do here today is identify a course of action that will benefit all: artists, labels, writers and publishers.

Hmmm, who’s missing from that list of interested parties? I won’t spoil scrivener’s answer, go read the post.

Part 2 begins the meat of his analysis. This part laments the fact that the industry has never considered the fan in any of their calculations. In fact, some corners of the industry actually write off all fans as thieves that artists must be protected from.

Check out the series. It’s a very well thought out and written opinion piece that puts the DIY ethic in stark contrast to the big label way of doing things.

1. Full disclosure: I am participating in an interview with the Phree Musiqe Blog about DJ Edna today [↩]

I’m only about 40 pages into the book, and I’m vigorously nodding my head as I read. The website may look a little slick, but trust me, this handbook is full of great marketing ideas for the DIY musician. It also covers the basics of the current digital music landscape and has several inspirational stories of successful independent musicians to keep your motivation up.

Although I’m not finished, I would classify this as a must read for any DIY artist. It’s already inspired some great future feature ideas for DJ Edna.

You can also find it at amazon.com.