Major Contacts has spent over 8 years providing verified music industry contacts to artists, producers, and songwriters across 12 categories — from A&R reps and talent scouts to recording studios, music lawyers, TV/film producers, and influencers. Based in Los Angeles, the platform serves a global music community.
The brief was to completely rebuild the platform: new UI/UX designed in Figma, full Elementor Pro development, and a completely custom Airtable integration — because the entire contact database lives in Airtable and needed to be surfaced on the WordPress frontend with custom layouts, real-time search and filtering, and membership-based access control.
On top of that: a three-tier membership system (Monthly, Annual, Lifetime), an AI-powered outreach proposal generator so members can write better cold emails to industry contacts, saved contact lists, pitch templates, an analytics dashboard, and follow-up reminders. Every premium feature locked behind the appropriate membership tier.
This was one of the longest and most technically demanding projects Webvio has delivered.
Major Contacts | Music Industry Contact Platform
A full-stack music industry contacts platform for Major Contacts — giving artists, producers, and songwriters direct access to verified A&Rs, managers, agents, publishers, and studios. Built on WordPress and Elementor Pro with a custom Airtable API integration, membership tiers, AI proposal generation, and advanced search filtering.
What we built and why
Technologies used
The design across all devices
How we approached it
Major Contacts started with a complete Figma design phase covering every page and user state — public marketing pages, the gated contact directory, individual contact category pages, the member dashboard, proposal generator UI, saved contacts, pricing page, and the onboarding flow.
The visual direction is dark and professional — fitting for a platform targeting serious music industry professionals. Bold typography, a structured directory layout, and clear membership upgrade prompts throughout create a product that feels credible and built for people who take their careers seriously.
The most complex design challenge was the contact directory itself. The data lives in Airtable — but Airtable's native embed doesn't allow custom layouts, branding, or membership-based filtering. We had to design a fully custom directory UI in Figma that we then built from scratch on the WordPress frontend, pulling live data from Airtable via API.
Build highlights
Built a fully custom Airtable API integration from scratch — pulling live contact data from Airtable bases into WordPress, rendering it in a custom-designed directory layout with real-time updates whenever the Airtable database is changed by the client team.
The entire contact directory is membership-gated — free visitors see teaser data, paid members unlock full contact details based on their plan tier. Access rules are applied dynamically per record, per category, and per membership level across all 12 contact categories.
Built a custom search and filter system on top of the Airtable data — filtering by contact name, genre, location, position, and company in real time. Airtable's native embed has no custom filter capability; we built the entire filter logic in custom JavaScript talking directly to the Airtable API.
Integrated an AI-powered outreach tool that helps members generate personalised cold email proposals for specific contacts — inputting the artist's genre, goal, and target contact type, and receiving a tailored pitch ready to send. Available on Annual and Lifetime plans.
Architected and built a complete three-tier membership system — Monthly, Annual, and Lifetime plans — with WooCommerce Subscriptions handling billing, and custom access control logic determining which features, contacts, and tools each tier can access across the entire platform.
Built a frontend member dashboard with saved contact lists, pitch email templates, a follow-up reminder system, and an analytics view — giving paying members a lightweight CRM experience for managing their music industry outreach without leaving the platform.
Challenges & solutions
Airtable doesn't support custom layouts or filters
The entire Major Contacts database — thousands of verified industry contacts across 12 categories — lives in Airtable. But Airtable's embed is a locked iframe with no custom styling, no membership filtering, and no ability to gate content by user role. Using the native embed was not an option.
Custom Airtable API layer with WordPress frontend
We built a custom PHP and JavaScript layer that calls the Airtable API directly, fetches the contact data, and renders it in a fully custom WordPress template. This gave us complete control over the layout, the filtering logic, and the membership-based access rules — while keeping the client's Airtable as the single source of truth for contact data management.
Integrating AI proposal generation for music outreach
Musicians and producers often don't know how to write effective cold outreach emails to A&Rs and managers. The platform needed an AI tool that understood the music industry context and could generate tailored proposals — not generic ChatGPT outputs.
Custom AI integration with music industry prompting
Integrated an AI API with a custom prompt architecture built specifically for music industry outreach — factoring in the member's genre, career stage, target contact type, and goal to generate proposals that read like they were written by someone who understands the industry. Available on premium tiers as a core membership value driver.
Results & impact
Major Contacts launched with a platform that finally matched the quality of the 8-year contact database it houses. The custom Airtable integration means the client team can update contacts directly in Airtable — their existing workflow — and changes appear live on the platform immediately, with no developer involvement.
The three-tier membership structure with the Lifetime access scarcity play (134 spots) created strong conversion pressure at launch. The AI proposal generator became an immediate differentiator — a feature no competing music contacts platform offers — giving members a real reason to upgrade to Annual or Lifetime rather than staying on Monthly.
Final thoughts
Airtable as a database. WordPress as the frontend. Custom API, AI tools, and membership logic bridging them. This is what complex platform work looks like.
Major Contacts is the most technically layered project in Webvio’s portfolio. The core challenge — taking a live Airtable database and building a fully custom, membership-gated, AI-enhanced frontend on WordPress — required custom API work, access control middleware, and a search and filter system built entirely from scratch. No plugin did this. We built it. The result is a platform that has operated for over 8 years and now has the technology to match its reputation.
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