Use case “Universal Music France”

Manage and publish pictures to promote the music library and merchandising

Universal Music France is the French subsidiary of the Universal Music Group major. It gathers many labels which form a large music library, satisfying the taste of the most demanding music lovers.

The IT department has chosen Alchemy to implement and host its project and Phraseanet has become the central tool to manage and publish pictures intended for the promotion of the music library or merchandising.


Phraseanet stores more than 150 000 images that correspond to archive pictures or promotional images related to music production. In addition, Phraseanet stores scanned contracts gathered into photo stories to facilitate access to legal information. Album covers complete the collection. By means of a specific development, they are automatically filled by the Phraseanet API using informations obtained from a webservice of Universal Music Group.



A customized front-end interface

For users, an internal public, access to the fund is made through the Parade interface. This unique interface, created in relation to the business needs of different types of users, offers simplicity and efficiency.
Artistic directors and project managers access the photos and stories by: artists, albums, photographers or years… So many criteria or filters available in one click when using the facets. Sales representatives benefit from a specific research tool, custom- developed, to retrieve the visuals intended for operations with distributors.



Further developments

Shortly after the initial implementation of the project, the Universal Music France teams expressed other needs giving rise to further developments. The modular architecture of the Phraseanet plugin has made it possible to build an export tool to feed the Universalmusic.fr website in media content from the Phraseanet DAM. Because it would be tedious to monitor media operating dates depending on the context of broadcast or use, workflow tasks help the photo Documentation team: Expiration of rights on pictures linked to an album promotion, warning the users, publication on the website… Phraseanet takes care of everything.

  • Date: May 2016
  • Number of media files: 224728 media files, 20000 stories, 2To of hosted data
  • Number of users: 185