Bear Cole · Technology, systems & delivery
One catalog. Ten artist websites.
A practical example of Bear Cole’s web development and systems work: shared music records, separate identities and verifiable public pages.
By Bear Cole · September 25, 2026
The challenge
Artist websites need accurate information without becoming copies of one another. Re-entering credits, tracks and release details on every site makes consistency fragile. The goal was to connect a shared catalog to independently designed public websites.
My contribution
I directed the requirements, relationships and review process as part of Mission HQ and Free the Line. Using AI-assisted development, I worked through how data should move from the catalog into the public pages, and how to check whether the result matched the intended record.
What changed
The rollout aligned music structured data across ten artist sites, including relationships between recordings and releases, ordered track lists, durations and performer identities. The pages retained their visual identities. Shared information was handled as data rather than copied promotional text.
A lesson from stale information
An update is only useful when the website eventually shows it. A cache-expiry issue could keep serving old information by treating an existing snapshot as fresh. The fix made freshness depend on the snapshot’s actual generation time, with a regression check for expired data.
Verification and limits
Build checks and structured-data tests were paired with observations of public pages. Observations are dated because availability changes. Some catalog items still need editorial review; the implementation does not mean every record is complete, or that search engines will show a particular result.
The broader practice
This is the overlap I enjoy: web development, information architecture, operations and a real creative business. The same approach applies whenever multiple websites need to stay distinct while sharing accurate, maintainable information.
Continue exploring
Web development at Free the Line · Mission HQ case study · Bear Cole’s selected work