There has always been a cure for the music industry’s systems epidemic: custom business software. The problem was the price tag. Years to build. Millions to maintain. Which is why we never considered it.

That’s what’s changed. Tools now exist that give non-technical people access to the superpower of relational databases, driving the cost of custom business software down to our orbit. Airtable is one of those tools.

Notion, which I know to have a meaningful footprint in the music industry, is another. My preference is known. But having never built anything in Notion, my credibility is shot.

Enter Alessandro Viola.

Alessandro works at Warner Classics. Originally on the marketing team, he spent evenings tinkering in Notion, in an effort to fix their broken spreadsheet systems. He ended up transforming their day-to-day operations and carving out an entirely new role for himself along the way.

Last year, he rebuilt everything in Airtable. Making Alessandro uniquely qualified to weigh in on this debate.

Watch the full conversation here or listen on Spotify.

Join me on Feb 5 for the next Airtable Media & Entertainment User Group meeting where we will be discussing the most common Airtable mistakes we see and how to avoid them. Register here.