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A system to unify four separate song libraries so that the staff at each geographic location could easily locate, listen to, and retrieve songs from the entire collection of more than 800,000 published works, then transfer these songs to CD and effectively pitch them to potential licensees
How TechEmpower brought it to life:
TechEmpower built DEMI, the Digital Enterprise Media Infrastructure, to link UMPG's libraries in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Nashville. DEMI, a central database of songs and a digital song-distribution system accessible from the four offices:
- Enables UMPG staff members to locate and retrieve either specific songs or songs that have a particular genre, mood, tempo, and so forth
- Lets any song be played back at any office
- Lets staff members burn the songs they've selected onto CDs at the click of a mouse, which are then sent to clients as part of the pitch process
- Lets engineers print CD labels and upload new digitized media to the centralized repository of digital assets
- Was built to ensure that the new central library will be available to future applications
The technology:
TechEmpower built three Web-based applications and a Visual Basic application that work together to form the DEMI system. The Web-based applications are built on our proprietary Gemini infrastructure-a Java-servlet- and JSP-based Web-based application that runs on Windows NT, using SQL Server 7 as its database backend. The site also integrates with three third-party components and numerous other technologies, including XML and JavaScript. Behind the scenes we are controlling the digital assets and placing them appropriately for quick playback from a variety of sources. One of the fun technical aspects of the system was a one-click interface to an automated CD-burner and labeler that we refer to as "Burnie." Using an API, our application could automatically put on appropriate labels and simultaneously print (on a separate laser printer) shipping information and labels.
The results:
DEMI launched successfully and is getting the songs entered into the system and digitally rendered incrementally. Universal Music's internal IT staff and TechEmpower continue to work together on future functionality that will make the system even more useful and push it farther into Universal's supply chain.
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