One year and one day ago, Kyla and I hit go on this website, fingers firmly crossed and breath duly held. I’m not sure I had any expectations or even a clue about what was going to happen here. We didn’t know if anyone would join, or what they would do once they got here. Yet, here we are 366 days later with nearly 7,000 members as of this blog post, over 8,000 fans on Facebook and nearly 3,000 Twitter followers. Which is to say nothing of our average of 90,000 unique readers each month.
During our first year in this format – whatever it is – more than a half-million people around the world have come here to read about roots music, watch videos, look at photos, listen to the songs we’ve featured on the home page. We’ve grown into a vibrant community of artists, labels, bloggers, djs, venue owners, festival promoters, and fans around the world. And, we’ve seen a number of intelligent, well-written blog posts from strangers we never would have known were it not for this site (see my list of some highlights from 2009).
We enjoyed the first ever No Depression Festival and started making plans for a second. We’ve thrown our hat into the podcasting ring with the monthly ND Indie Roots Music Podcast. We’ve also launched the No Depression Archives – an enormous undertaking for which you can thank Kyla and her team of a couple dozen volunteers. There, in case you’re unfamiliar, you can find more than 7,000 articles from the entire print history of No Depression, the magazine. And, we continue to map out other projects and goals which will make this site easier to use and more comprehensive in the future.
I feel a little like I’m giving a State of the Union speech now. Maybe I should add “the state of our union is strong.”
As the community manager here, though, I couldn’t possibly let this milestone go by without saying thank you for the first full year. It delights me to no end to be able to facilitate a community built around the music I love and the artists who inspire me. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now – thank you for showing up. Thanks for blogging and uploading your media, for buying ads, participating in forum discussions, starting groups which highlight the local music scenes around the world. Thanks for donating to help us stay afloat, for telling your friends about us, and for simply coming by every now and then to see what’s new.
In this era of uncertainty in the media, it’s exciting to be part of a website like this one, where strangers with a common interest are coming together to fashion a new way forward. We couldn’t be here without you, and we sincerely welcome any ideas, feedback, questions, or concerns. There’s no wrong way to use this site (aside from spamming people), so please continue to knock yourselves out. As I’ve noted before, this community is whatever we make it together. Here’s to another exciting year!
