End-to-End Automation for a Professional Music Charting Pipeline
A continuously active workflow companion that automates and coordinates the full professional music charting pipeline. The system evolved into a persistent tool that the client keeps open while working, coordinating setup, transformation, and delivery tasks as part of the creative process.
Define the problem
A professional music chartist workflow relied on a series of repetitive, tightly coupled manual steps spread across multiple tools and platforms. The process depended on strict conventions, manual data transfer, and deep domain knowledge, making it fragile and time-consuming.
While the initial need was narrowly scoped—adapting XML output to be compatible with an existing script—this quickly exposed broader inefficiencies across the entire charting lifecycle, from project setup and resource gathering to production and delivery.
Constraints
- Multiple tools with incompatible formats
- Private portals
- Domain-specific rules
- Existing legacy script
Solution Approach
The solution evolved into a companion workflow system for multi-tool music charting, spanning Logic Pro, Dorico, and a legacy publishing pipeline. Rather than replacing existing tools, the system orchestrates data flow between them while preserving strict output compatibility. Modular utilities handle tasks such as project setup, XML interpretation, metadata synchronization, and final format translation. A GUI provides visibility into each step, allowing multiple charting projects to be managed concurrently. Domain-specific musical edge cases—such as time signatures, pickups, and repeating measures—required adaptive parsing strategies to ensure accurate translation from notation software to the company’s required publishing format.
The system was designed to work alongside the chartist rather than replace their tools, automating transitions between steps that were previously manual and error-prone.
Tools & Technologies
- Python
- Selenium
- Tkinter
- MIDIUtil
Results
The result is an end-to-end charting companion that stays open throughout the entire charting process, automates setup tasks between steps, and ensures outputs from one tool consistently match the inputs required by the next. By removing repetitive, error-prone work and reducing context switching between external tools, overall productivity increased from 3–4 charts per week to approximately 3 charts per day.