Here’s another tool that we use quite a lot, especially for the record label work and sharing of information. I was looking for way to find or write a custom database system for all the tiny bits of information that we need to share when working with label releases. But I realized after some hard thinking that I rather spend my few spare hours writing new songs than tinkering with a web-based database application that would require constant rewriting and tinkering.

So I just installed a wiki service on our account. I used usemod, been using it since the early days. You could also look at MediaWiki that Wikipedia is running. The biggest difference is that MediaWiki looks pretty, but requires database access (not hard, but another thing to worry about). While usemod is just creating files inside the directory it is installed under.

In either case, this requires some administration work and maybe a little bit custom programming, unless the ISP you are using already provides a wiki service of some kind. Also, you don’t want the whole world to know about your internal releases and other information, so you need to place this under a password protected login.

Anyway, such a freeform database service has so far worked really well for all the work we do concerning keeping track of lots of tiny bits of info — one of those things anyone running a label will notice takes more time than expected.