The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry acts on the behalf of the international recording industry. This large organisation acts for 1,500 record producers and distributors in 76 countries worldwide.

Overview

The IFPI Secretariat is responsible for co-ordinating international strategies in the key areas of the organisation's work, such as anti-piracy enforcement, technology, legal strategies, litigation and public relations. It also lobbies governments and has representation in international organisations.

Based in London with links to regional offices in Brussels, Hong Kong, Miami, Moscow, etc. the Secretariat is the recording industry's most authoritative source of market research and information, providing a comprehensive range of global industry statistics.

The Requirements

Part of the Market Research department's responsibilities is the recording of sales figures for artists' albums and single across the World. More specifically the awards they've achieved. They also get many requests for this type of information from their members and the general public. They needed a system which would allow them to collect all this information in a single resource and allow users to view this information.

The Solution

Awards Database

Alchemy created a database which would hold all the information pertaining to the awards. We then created a system which would allow the Market Research Department to upload the awards information. This was particularly difficult as each country would report their awards in a different way. We had to standardise the reporting process so that data could easily be added to the system.

We then created a public interface which would sit inside the MRO framework that allowed users to view any of the awards information stored in the database. This data was to be viewed by country and year. We also added the ability for the user to sort each of the sets of data by any of the column headings so that the data could be sorted as to their own criteria. This gave the user the ability to sort the data by; Artist, Title, Country of Origin, Release Data etc. As there was usually a lot of data in each set we added a row highlighter which would highlight the row the mouse was on making it easier for the user to view each of individual entries in the system.

Testimonial

"Alchemy's interpretation of our project requirements has been excellent from day one. Development is consistently efficient and well managed which, added to the team's proactive and approachable attitude made the whole experience painless. They deliver on time and when we need to communicate at short notice, they're always available. When we needed to implement other projects, we have had no hesitation in contacting the Alchemy team. It's not easy finding a proven & reliable new media outfit nowadays. We're happy to say that's not a problem we have."