Ignored By Dinosaurs 🦕

I was thinking yesterday for some reason.

I was thinking about how much more inspired I felt to write to nobody/everybody this time last year. I was remembering how it felt effortless to expound upon the music business and software as if I had anything of worth to say. Interestingly, I think I did. Interestingly, now that I ostensibly know a lot more what I'm talking about I feel a lot more reluctant to blather about it. Less confident. Why is that?

I think it has a lot to do with not making my living on a stage anymore. Getting up in front of people and doing a confident, creative thing for a living has a lot of side effects that are good and bad. Playing music was a fairly easy skill for me to pick up, and gave me much needed confidence in my teens that I might actually be a talented individual. It helped me to cast off some of the negative side effects of non-jockdom in high school. It gave me a very clear and immediate feedback mechanism as to whether or not I was doing a good job. This feedback is kind of like fertilizer for the ego. Fertilizer can obviously help plants grow stronger than they ordinarily would, but if you don't use care in the feeding it can take over the whole side of your yard, just as letting the ego grow unchecked can lead to a lot more serious problems (and seemingly uncontrollable side effects).

I think this experience thus far has been a -little- lot like taking the pruning shears to my ego. It kinda sucks because I feel a -little- lot less productive and open right now, but I think that it's going to be a good thing for my long term spiritual health. Besides, I'm actually doing a hell of a lot more than I ever have before. I just doesn't feel that way because there's no crowd cheering when I do something halfway right. Strange, mostly because I disagreed with my shrink when he said something like this to me a few months ago. I didn't consider myself the attention craving type, which has turned out to be not-the-case.

When you prune back that bush, it looks a little ugly at first.

#personal

Drush is a tool for working on Drupal websites. It's technically filed away on Drupal.org as a “module”, but it's not exactly a module. It's more like an add-on for your webserver setup, either development or production, that adds some really useful tools for managing your Drupal website. For instance, those of you familiar with Wordpress might be surprised to know that Drupal has no built in facility for updating either the core Drupal code or any of the add-ons (which go by the name “Plug-ins” in Wordpress and “Modules” in Drupal). I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I think the average Drupal site is built with many more of these open-source-and-constantly-shifting contributions than the typical Wordpress site.

What all that means is that Drupal is a pain in the ass to maintain. When one of your modules has an update, you get a message that tells you so. These messages come all the time. They never stop, actually. And there's no way to make them go away except to go and download the latest version(s) and upload it/them to the server over FTP, hope nothing went wrong with the transfer, and then go and update your DB, more or less manually. Over time, slackness can set in.

I've been reading about it for several weeks because the most interesting thing it does (to me now) is take care of updating your stuff. The downside for some is that it's a command line tool. However, if you like the command line because it makes you feel like a real programmer, you're in luck! drush up updates your site, modules and all by downloading them straight from the Drupal CVS repository, and then running any DB updates for you. “Magic”, you might say had you been deprived of this after having tasted Wordpress' sweet waters.

I haven't even used it yet, but I spent the last two days figuring our how to install it, and found the answer scattered over 3 or 4 different places. Maybe I'm the only one, but I figured I'd make it a little easier for the next guy.

1. Make sure you know how to use SSH on your grid server account, and log in.
2. You will now be at the command line. You want to make sure you are in the home directory, so type:
   

cd ~/ 3. At this point you'll create a folder for stuff that you install to live in. Type:

mkdir bin, and then switch into that directory:

cd bin 4. This command fetches it from drupal.org for you:

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drush-All-versions-3.0-beta1.tar.gz

in tarball form. 5. Untar:

tar xzvf drush-All-versions-3.0-beta1.tar.gz 6. Switch into the new drush folder:

cd drush 7. Take a look at the contents of that folder by typing ls and make sure everything looks like this: LICENSE.txt commands drush.api.php drush.info drush_logo-black.png example.drushrc.php README.txt drush drush.bat drush.php example.drush.inc includes 8. Note the path to that folder by typing: pwd.

You'll get something back like: /home/70298/users/.home/bin/drush.

The drush command is at the end of that path, and you have to let the server know that now.

Note that everything before bin can be replaced with ~/. 9. Switch back to your FTP client and root around in your server for the “home” folder. It's going to be back toward the root:
cd ~/users 10. You may or may not see a file named .bash_profile. Note that it might be hidden depending on your FTP client. If you are sure that it's not there, create a file and give it that name. 11. MT runs PHP4 on the command line by default. You have to specifically tell it to run Drush with PHP5. Thus, paste this into the file you just created (.bash_profile).

alias drush='/usr/bin/php5 ~/bin/drush/drush.php' 12. source .bash_profile to reload the .bash_profile file. 13. God willing, if you type in drush at this point you are going to get a long list of newly available commands.

Note that this took me over a month of poking and prodding to get working correctly. Specifically, in contrast to all the Drush installation tutorials I found out there, I had to specifically direct it to the drush.php file, rather than the generic drush wrapper file that the tutorials directed me to use when aliasing the Drush command. As usually YMMV.

Good luck!

EDIT – September 8, 2010

I've been having issues with updating the Drupal core with Drush. drush up works just fine to update any modules, but for some reason I get an error that Drush needs PHP 5.2 when trying to update the core. It seems to kick out of php5 when it gets to Drupal core. I've tried running the full php5 /home/70298/users/.home/bin/drush/drush.php up and it still says that my cli version of PHP is too old. Any suggestions/workarounds/fixes are most welcome. Thanks, JG.

EDIT – November 8, 2010

After filing a ticket with Media Temple's Awesome Customer Support, they pointed me to a knowledge base article on configuring multiple open basedir directories. I haven't had a chance to go through it yet and update the instructions above, but if and when this becomes absolutely necessary to use Drush, I certainly will.

I knew they were out there somewhere. Their twist is that they're writing all the tools themselves. They don't have all their cards down on the table, but it seems like they're ultimately after some kind of easy hosted thing.

http://cashmusic.org/

I still think that Drupal is a better way to go. In fact, I think any open source movement that can piggyback on the conventions and success of another is already that much further up the ladder. These guys appear to have a track record, though. Who knows. Maybe some of their tools can be adapted.

Hello, faithful. Or curious. Or google searchers. As usual I've got too many ideas and too much work and not enough time or attention span.

The iBD project lives here, or rather is in gestation here. It's probably going to be a few weeks at the least until i can actually put some time into it. As I see it, there's a goodish amount of work to be done. Gee, I wonder if that's why nobody has really tried this before? Anyway, in the meantime I have some actual work that I need to get off of my plate and into my portfolio. Being a relative Drupal newby presents many thrilling challenges.

The good news is that one of my current client projects involve calendaring, a big portion of the to-do list for this project. Drupal already has most of this ground covered for us, but implementation is going to be key. Adding an actual calendar does up the complexity, both for us as the builders and installers and for the end-client, the bands.

eCommerce is the big deal here, I think. For too long it's been in the hands of someone else for most bands. That's got to change. If anyone knows more than I do about Amazon S3, please chime in. I think DIY content distribution is going to be the paradigm of the near-future, and it's not that difficult for developers to do. The challenge is to create a system that not to difficult for bands to do. As always. A system that monitors digital content downloads on the site and automatically throttles up cloud distribution as needed?

Anyway, just a quick “hi”, and to let you know that I'm around if you need me.

The open source website system for musical artists

It's so obvious when I say it out loud. (edit: that's not exactly the most succinct tagline though, so help me out.)

If you're just joining the party and you don't know what open source is, check this out. If we haven't met before, this is some more of my backstory over the last year or so.

Pre-ramble

Forgive me if you've read some of this here a hundred times. Part of my process is to refine repeatedly.

I'm a musician. I'm 32. My entire professional career has been spent behind the wheel of either an upright bass, an electric bass, or a pair of turntables. In particular the years from 2003 to 2009 were spent on the road with the band Railroad Earth. About 2 years ago I started teaching myself to program. I wasn't really sure where I'd end up, but it seemed like a good skill to have for the inevitable day that I just couldn't keep touring for a living anymore.

Recent history

I quit the band and started making a living as a web programmer. I found a client who needed a me and have since been busy doing lots of nice stuff with a designer who I get along great with. About a month ago I got another gig doing a little thing for this environmental non-prof out in San Francisco. I built exactly the thing they asked me to in both Ruby on Rails and Drupal. I built the Ruby version first with lots of help from a friend in about 5 days. I spent 3 agonizing days trying to launch it on a shared webserver before giving up and rebuilding the entire thing in Drupal with 36 hours left until the deadline. The Drupal version lit up the first time I flipped on the switch and saved my bacon. I had already bought a ticket to DrupalCon – happening in San Francisco a few weeks after that.

Drupal (droo'-pul)

While at DrupalCon I drank lots and lots and lots of open source Kool-Aid. The buzz that I got at DrupalCon was exactly like the buzz I used to get at music festivals we'd play every summer. Tons of cool people hanging out, sharing ideas, drinking beer, meeting new cool people, and being excited about the same thing – the same cool, creative thing. I went to sessions for geeks, for marketing folks, for freelancers, for non-profits, for you name it.

I came back a Drupal developer.

One of the cool tools that I was introduced to there was called OpenAtrium. It's basically a tool for managing projects, a thing that becomes very necessary the instant you get off the road and start building websites. I had tried out BaseCamp with my new gig and liked it a lot. OA was essentially an open source variation, built on top of Drupal. Many of the contributions of the Drupal developer community were rolled into one comprehensive, focused package that was probably done in a fraction of the time that an enterprise team would taken to do a proprietary version of something similar.

Open source is a very powerful idea. Drupal is free. All the cool things that people have built to customize and extend Drupal are free. That's why Open Atrium is free.

The open source website system for musical artists

So a cool feature of Drupal that's only recently getting attention paid to it is the “installation profile”. That's how OA works, and it basically means that you can set up Drupal how you want it (you can quite literally do almost anything that involves the internet with Drupal) and build a script that installs it that way anywhere. You can have, for example, a real band website, for free, right out of the box. The blog, the tour dates, the Facebook and Flickr integration, the forum, the eCommerce – virtually all of the pieces are laying right there, waiting to be assembled by those of us who know how. Those of us who need something that doesn't exist yet write it and give it back to everyone else using the system. It's constantly improved. The roadmap for this thing could be ridiculously cool. The API possibilities if a bunch of people started using this thing? Come on!

I know, the irony of this being a Wordpress powered site has occurred to me, but before I go and uproot and move this blog to Drupal so that we can get to collaborating for real, does this sound like a good idea? One that could maybe change the game?

Pssst, Drupal devs...

I don't know if you've noticed, but the guys who made up OA and PressFlow and OpenPublish are making a damn decent business as consultants for their product. I don't know if there's any money to be made here or not, but this market has been waiting for this idea. Hell, Drupal has been waiting for this idea. I know a lot of people in the music biz that would probably be delighted to help us out. We can get press and we can get traction. Anybody wanna help out?

Edit: the post that put the last piece of this idea into place. Thanks, Dries!

#theidea

I realized about a year ago that nobody anywhere even had a clue, never mind a plan that saved what was worth saving about the music industry – the music part.

---

Guilty. Most of us reading this are. There were several entire generations that went by where it was a perfectly logical thing to associate money and music as somehow being comfortable companions if not downright synonymous. It was BIG business – not in the way that defense contracting is, but it was perfectly logical for a certain subset of money and attention seeking individuals to get into the music business. And you didn't even have to have musical talent! In fact, there was more money in it for those who didn't! Word eventually got around and by the late 80s most labels heads weren't music lovers but lawyers. The snake started eating its tail sometime around then. Nirvana was arguably the last great, game-changing band that came out of that entire era.

I don't mean to sound like one of those bloviating music biz pundits. So anyway –>

I've held a simple and obvious belief for a few years now while transitioning from a musician into a programmer/musician. If the internet tore down the old edifice, the internet will build the new one. There are any number of eCommerce solutions out there for bands to sell their stuff online. There are any number of solutions out there to make building your band's website an easy and code-free endeavor. There are any number of solutions out there to make it easier to spread your word. These ideas are good ones, but still missing the target (in my humblest of opinions). The basic problem with all of these ideas is that they are still trying to monetize someone else's music. That scheme is the most fundamental cornerstone of the edifice that just fell. Any successful new paradigm must throw it away.

Admittedly, it's the most difficult one to throw away. However, imagine if a community emerged in pursuit of throwing this stone away. Not just a programmer or a company trying to reinvent the wheel and somehow still feed themselves, but an ecosystem of people who did it for the good of music itself in their free time, without the pressures of business and investors and expectations on them.

Sorta like an open source project, I guess...

#theidea

If the music business is ever going to be saved, if musicians are ever going to be allowed a chance to achieve a minimum standard of living, if we are going to rescue music itself from it's place as today's disposable trinket and restore it's place as the universal human language, then the paradigm has got to be completely and utterly reinvented.

---

I knew what I was looking for, but I still didn't quite get it. I was looking for some kind of way to make it easier to build successful band websites, but I was also looking for something that could be monetized, something that could make a decent amount of money for whoever provided the service. Therein lies the flaw. That same flaw has reduced the record business into a heap of garbage-producing rubble. That same flaw has lead to the consolidation of LiveNation and TicketMaster. That same flaw keeps untold quantities of great music out of the ears of eager listeners every day because the avenues for promotion and distribution simply weren't available.

We can change that now.

So, the software model of yore is just that. The one where you go to the mall and buy a box with a disk inside of it. Do you remember doing that? I do. I actually remember it more clearly than going to the music store, but that's probably a figment of where I'm at right now in terms of my interests. I digress, within five sentences...

Where was I? Oh yeah, so the music business of yore is just that. Remember the one where you went to the store and bought a box with a disk in it? That model isn't working out so well these days. The problem is that it worked out SO well for SO long that the whole industry has taken an extraordinarily long time to figure out how to save their phony-baloney jobs. I know – news flash, right?

Anyway, back to the software business, which is a lot younger as an industry and which has a pretty solid record of evolving past whatever Goliath emerges in whatever epoch/industry model is/was dominant. Did that make sense? What I meant was that the entire history of software is built by heretics who see the opportunity in moving the ball.

The music business, on the other hand, is historically run a little more like the country club. It's mostly the same players that have been there, except for the few that have finally died and opened up a seat. Even today. You'd think that there'd be plenty of room for new upstarts with fresh ideas to come in and revolutionize an industry and an art form that is so clearly demanding just that. Where's the evidence that that's the case? I've got a funny story about the introduction of CD techology at an AES conference, but that's another post.

Pardon the long winded exposition. I haven't been writing lately and it feels really good to have time. I was on rt. 80 the other day and I had a flash. What if you started a band and ran it like a software company? Instead of “album cycles” you'd have “rapid development”. The product wouldn't just be music and the usual merch, but would really take advantage of technology to give the fan something more to interact with. You'd have a rocking website of course, which would be the main avenue through which new creative product would be distributed. You'd have a mobile app to give your fans commuting into NYC on the train something to play with/listen to on the way in. The press would be so enamored with your savvy that you'd barely even need a publicist.

I think ideally you'd have a couple of developers who play in the band, a really strong songwriter, and a producer type. Everyone gets to concentrate on their creative thing and everyone is fairly equal. How fun would that be?

So, the 14 of you that still swing by here know my backstory. Sometime in 2003 I joined a band with a neglected website. At one of my first band meetings we discussed overhauling said website, since the majority of our fanbase was a grassroots kinda thing and most of our promotion happened via online channels like the Archive and YahooGroups, etc. Sometime in 2005 we still had that same website. I was at my parent's house in north Georgia when it occurred to me “hey, you know, you could probably learn how to build websites in the time that it's going to take this band to get it together enough to hire someone to do it.” If I'd only listened to that voice more clearly, but instead I got bogged down on the Dreamweaver section of the Adobe site and gave up without really exploring what web development was all about. I was still trying to be a musician in any case.

Fastforward to 2008 and we'd finally done something about our website a few months prior. I got an iPhone. I'll skip this part of the story since it's been documented ad nauseum on this blog. Anyway, it didn't take long for the potential of mobile apps as a huge and brand-spanking-new market to become an obsession. In particular – the potential for such apps to help revitalize a music business that had become very long on the latter and very short on the former. There's also the simple fact that in 50 years people are going to be on these little things and not big old screens anymore and therefore the internet is at the very least going to need to be reformatted. So, start learning to program iPhone apps...

Hey, this is hard to do yourself and really expensive if you hire someone. Wouldn't it be cool if you could make a reusable framework for all your friends' bands so that y'all could share the cost and the rewards of such a system? Well, if you're all sharing a mobile platform, you might as well be sharing a website platform too, since most of the stuff that's gonna be on that mobile app is going to have to live somewhere on the internet. It'd be a lot easier to just interact with one protocol than a million, right? If I'm not making sense, let me know.

Well, hey if we got everyone on the same platform for their website, then we could also build in lots of features that would make those sites more interactive with the rest of the internet as a whole. I mean, who likes posting your tour dates to your own website and then to Facebook and then to MySpace (or paying someone to do that for you)? Raise your hand if you know what an API is, and why it's important. Wow, it seems like 10 years ago that I wrote that.

This was my thought process two years ago. I'll be back.

#theidea

That sounds like the spirit, then! How do I explain this?