P!nk's site was the first rolled out on Sony Music's new multilingual platform
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Over the past two and a half months, Sony Music rolled out some of their top musical artist sites in new multilingual versions based on Drupal 6. P!nk, Beyonce, Britney Spears, John Legend, Kelly Clarkson and The Fray were among the first to go multilingual, with many more on the way.
Before introducing multilingual support, Sony Music had a solid platform built on Drupal 5 from which they delivered dozens of major artist websites with interactive and social networking features. But having their sites in English only presented significant barriers. Going multilingual would allow them to expand fan bases and reach out to new audiences.
In addition to their team of in-house developers and other contractors, Sony Music sponsored CivicActions to improve internationalization support in Drupal, contributing back all development work. CivicActions guided the internationalization of Sony Music's platform and ensured stability as they upgraded from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6.
Accomplishing these aims required an intensive focus on reviewing and upgrading the large selection of core and contributed modules Sony Music relies on. Sony Music's investment in improving the Drupal platform demonstrates the sound business case for contributing back.
Here's a summary of how we approached the work and how this project produced internationalization improvements throughout Drupal core and contrib that can be used on any site wanting to serve users in multiple languages and countries.