An Introduction

I first became interested in 4AD, a UK independent record label founded in 1980, towards the end of the '80's. I was falling in love with the music of Dead Can Dance, Clan of Xymox, Pixies, Bauhaus and The Birthday Party and was surprised when the 4AD label sampler "Lonely Is An Eyesore" came out in 1987 that all these bands were from the same label.

After visiting a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition of some American's collection of art, I came to thinking of all this musical art that 4AD have released that may one day drift into obscurity unless someone shows it as art. So now I'm on a crusade, to collect the first ten years of 4AD's releases and exhibit the collection on 4AD's 50th anniversary in 2030. This is a big task which will have some interesting twists and turns along the way.

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

The first disappointment

 Of course, it’s not all going to be plain sailing. I was really excited about finding http://www.discogs.com/. It’s a very useful site. It is a very large database of releases by just about every artist that has existed. If something isn’t on there, an account holder can add it. Users can also rate the quality of the information that is already on there and you can add any release to your collection and thus create an online record of your collection. Really the data is owned by the people that use it.

All looking good. This was going to save me a lot of time and trouble. Each release can have photo’s added to it and plenty of room for release notes etc. I got to realize that instead of going to all the trouble of creating a website with a database, I could use this on any website I put together. I could also track my collection in one place, create want lists, find releases I didn’t know existed etc.

But after putting my collection on http://www.discogs.com/, I realized that it doesn’t cater for non-audio/video formats. This is a blow. This means non of the postcards, posters, catalogues, calendars etc that have been officially catalogued releases cannot be added. This means keeping a separate and additional database and keeping this updated in a separate place.

This then has an effect on any future plans. If I put a website together it will have to have a database to store this second collection.  A database added to a website means greater complexity and cost. ARSE!

If I’m to have a database on my eventual website, I may as well do the lot. This was never going to be a walk in the park was it?
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