The Australian Music Database – My Back Shed

Have you ever been to a Museum? There are some fantastic Museum’s around the place covering a wide range of subjects. Car Museums, Aviation Museums and of course there are Music related ones as well. I like to think of this site as an online museum but no matter what the subject, they all have one thing in common. Out the back, away from the public, there is usually some kind of “big shed” that holds all sorts of bits and pieces that aren’t complete or need restoring before they can be displayed in the main museum. It’s a place where rusty bits are lovingly restored and re-assembled into beautiful historical exhibits. Once they are restored they are pushed into the public area for all to see.

This site is no different. My “great big shed out the back” is called the Australian Music Database. It’s the place where I gather all sorts of information about bands, musicians, recordings etc before I write the articles that appear here. It doesn’t have the stories that this site holds but it has tons of raw information that will eventually become completed stories or exhibits. Even though it has been available publicly for some time now I’ve been a bit lax in promoting it, mainly because it was really meant just for me. I didn’t worry too much about making it pretty as long as the info in it was accurate.

Over the past month or so I’ve re-written the database from scratch to make it more presentable and useful to the general public and today I’m taking the covers off the new version. As well as a clean new look there has been massive changes to the back-end of the application that will allow me to let other folks start to enter their own information into it which should see it expand very quickly. It is also being expanded to include Images, Gigs and Concerts, Roadcrew and soon, an Australian Music Trivia Quiz.

Some of the new features are still a couple of weeks away but the basic site is there, ready to go, right now. It already contains well over 200 bands, over 1000 musicians and many recordings. Stay tuned over the next few weeks for much, much more! Until then, I’d love to know what you think of the new look. Head over to www.AustralianMusicDatabase.com and check it out for yourself.