Summary of the site
Scene is a community website for discovering independent musicians, starting with USC and Los Angeles. The problem it addresses is that emerging artists need ways to reach new listeners, while listeners need a starting point for finding music within their local community.
Visitors would browse artists by genre and location, read recommendations from other fans, and follow links to hear the music. Members could submit artists and write short recommendations explaining why someone should listen. For example, a student looking for local electronic music could find a USC producer through another student's recommendation.
The idea connects to my work on ZuZu, a startup focused on relationships between independent artists and fans. Scene would explore how those relationships begin: discovery. It would be a focused, standalone project that a class group could build using PHP and MySQL.
Audience
The primary audience would be USC students and people interested in independent music in Los Angeles. A second audience would be student musicians and emerging local artists who want more people to discover their work. Anyone could browse the site, while registered members could contribute artist profiles and recommendations.
Underlying data
The database would store artist names, short biographies, cities, music links, and genres. It would also store user accounts and written recommendations connecting each contributor to an artist. Artists could have multiple genres, making it possible to search for different sounds.
We would start with a small collection of artist profiles based on public artist pages and information submitted by musicians. The site would grow as fans and artists add profiles and recommendations. An administrator would review contributions to help prevent spam and duplicate profiles. Music would be linked from the artist's existing pages.
The main features would be artist search, artist detail pages, user login, artist submissions, and fan recommendations. If time allows, a simple chart could show how many artists are listed in each genre.
Initial database schema
Five tables connect users, artists, genres, and recommendations. The artist_genres table allows an artist to belong to more than one genre. PK means primary key; FK means foreign key.
