| 1. What is Indie Heaven? | |
Indie Heaven is a hosted web solution for the music business. It handles the business of music, freeing the artist and indie owner from the mundane daily chores and the difficulty of running a profitable business. | |
| 2. What are the versions of Indie Heaven? | |
Choose between Cloud or DataCenter hosting. The Cloud Edition is designed for large businesses that require scalability in an enterprise context. The DataCenter versions (Lite, Pro, and Ultimate) are designed for individual artists and small independent production and promotion companies. | |
| 3. Do you handle the hosting? | |
Yes! We can handle the hosting for you, with one of our hosting partners. You can choose from any of the major Cloud providers, or any local DataCenter with a Linux environment providing Apache/PHP and MySql. If you wish we can serve as your webmasters as well. | |
| 4. What about the domain names? | |
We can handle these for you too, or you can handle them yourself. In most cases, an existing domain name must be transfered to the hosting provider for reliable domain name access. You will also have to update your DNS records if you wish to send out promotional e-mail, and once again we can help you with that if you wish. | |
| 5. Can I do everything myself? | |
Absolutely. If you're an internet whiz you can install and configure Indie Heaven yourself. We can provide you with the full code and instructions for how to install it. We strongly recommend though, that you leave the installation up to us. We do it with automated toolsets and it takes us literally three minutes to raise your web site (from scratch). The web site comes up in a default configuration that you can then take your time customizing. | |
| 6. How often are the databases updated? | |
Every 6 months, or more frequently when we get new data. We obtain data from dozens of different sources, and they're not always on the same schedule. Usually government sources are updated quarterly (things like FCC records), and e-mail contacts are vetted continuously in the background. | |
| 7. Can I add my own databases? | |
Yes! You can import data to the Indie Heaven tables from a web site, from another database, or from CSV files or simple text files - and you can add your own tables that you can make known to Indie Heaven. Anything you can represent in spreadsheet form can be imported, including mailing lists. If you have the Indie Heaven Cloud Edition you can even access Big Data directly. | |
| 8. What if I already have a web site? | |
If you already have a working web site running in a Linux hosted data center, installation may be as simple as creating a database and uploading a few files. Each case is different. If you choose to install Indie Heaven yourself, we will support you every step of the way. You get at least 4 hours of direct technical support for free with every installation, and we provide written guides and video tutorials to help you get started. | |
| 9. Does Indie Heaven handle the Cloud configuration? | |
Yes! Indie Heaven uses Terraform to create your optimal service configuration. Your configuration is kept in a text file, so you can use it again and again. Indie Heaven can be configured for any of the major Cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and the IBM and Google Clouds - and if you're in China and you'd like to run on the Huawei Cloud we can help with that too. | |
| 10. Which version of Indie Heaven is best for me? | |
Indie Heaven is upwardly mobile. We recommend starting with the configuration that matches the number of artists you have. If you're an individual artist and you own and operate your own business (and the entire business is "just you"), we recommend Indie Heaven Lite. If you're an Indie and you already have more than one Artist in your stable, we recommend Indie Heaven Pro. The Ultimate version is for indies who have lots of artists but can't afford the Cloud. It does everything the Cloud Edition does, just more slowly. The decision about Cloud vs Ultimate should depend on your uptime requirements. The Cloud has 24/7 availability, whereas if disaster strikes and your data center goes down your web sites won't work anymore. For this reason, if you're using the Ultimate version we recommend tesselating your deployment across multiple data centers. | |
| 11. What is the Indie Heaven Personal Edition and what doesn't it do? | |
The Indie Heaven Personal Edition runs in your local PC. You access it using your browser, the same way you'd surf to any web site. Indie Heaven's Personal Edition is a full accounting implementation, without any of the promo functionality. Specifically that means, even though the Store works, its only purpose is to be your playground, since no one else can log in to your personal version of Indie Heaven. You can place items in your store for sale, and you can buy them from yourself, and all of the numbers will be properly reflected on the company books. This way you can see how Indie Heaven works, and how easy it is for an Artist to control a store and a web site. However because this is a local implementation, it has no connectivity to the outside world. You can not send or receive e-mail, and you can not send out Press Releases. Additionally, since no one else can log in to your Personal Edition, many of the quantitative features become playgrounds, for instance the IP address analytics will have only one address to analyze. Nevertheless you will have full access to all of the Indie Heaven financial features, including User Accounts, Artist Accounts, Project Accounts ("Cost Centers"), and the Master Company Account. This Personal Edition of Indie Heaven will faithfully track your finances, and you can see how the monthly financial rollups work, and you can organize your finances into project budgets and other accounting silos. Indie Heaven is very powerful software, as you'll realize instantly when you lay your hands on it. Don't waste your time laying out spreadsheets, Indie Heaven has already done all the work for you, and it's all intuitive and it's all in one place. | |
| 12. What if my business grows, can I migrate my existing data to the Cloud? | |
Absolutely! Indie Heaven has a seamless migration path from solo owner-operator to holding company executive, and all points in between. As a solo artist, you'll find that most of the data centers frown on promotional email, whereas many of the Cloud operators will give you 2500 e-mails a day for free. At 2500 per day, you can target all 18,000 radio stations in the United States in about a week. For many artists, that's a good enough reason to migrate to the Cloud, and if you're currently using a one-off PR service, switching to Indie Heaven in the Cloud makes a lot of business sense. For $300 a month (the cost of one press release) you can run an enormous operation in the cloud, and if you're an indie owner and you're needing to send out half a dozen press releases a month, the Indie Heaven Cloud Edition becomes a total no-brainer. There's a little bit of setup, which we help you with (technical support comes free with every purchase) - and once you're set up with your Cloud Provider you can easily integrate Indie Heaven with any of your favorite cloud services. | |