Listen Before You Buy Is One Year Old Today – Can I Get A Woot Woot!?

Dayuuuummmmm.

One year, eh?  When I started the site I initially had a much broader and further reaching plan for it (which is being worked on by myself and my resourceful writers and I’ll reveal to you all very soon), something that was nothing like how the site is now (a cesspool for sarcasm and snide comments). I bought the domain name back in late 2007/early 2008 and putzed around with it, first off playing with Joomla and Seeqpod (anyone remember that?), then letting it sit and then as it was about to expire a buddy (shoutout to KeithA!) convinced me to keep it based on the domain name alone.

So I kept it and played around with it some more and then I started using it as a private and personal debt-management/finance tool to keep track of the monies I was losing and gaining, unseen by the world until I removed all of that shit and started posting music I was finding online.  It was mainly videos, but then I thought “Well fuck it, I might as well put this public”, and so I did.  On January 27th 2010 I made this awesome welcome post and then my first post proper was about a new Justice song being passed around that turned out to be a fake.

I expected a few people to read every now and again, maybe comment, maybe some artists would send me their music, maybe people would subscribe or like it on Facebook, but I honestly didn’t expect to get to where it is now.  The stats blew me away and whilst there are sites out there doing far more than this, I’ve stayed away from posting crap like Lady Gaga or My Chemical Romance (can that dude have a chemical romance with some bleach and his throat so we don’t have to hear him sing anymore?) or anything like that.  I started off just posting things I was seeing on other sites and then I started to do some band mining on MySpace and Bandcamp, getting in touch with bands and artists and asking to feature their music and striking up relationships with them in the process.

Then I started getting a few hits a day and I’d get the occasional email from an artist about featuring their music and I made a point from the very start (that I still do now) to always write back to anyone who sends me music, knowing what it’s like to write to someone and not even know if they read it or waiting to hear back from them with no idea whether they would get back to me or not.  Most people I wrote to/write to appreciate the reply and the honesty when I say I can’t put it up on my site if I don’t like it and then expect others to get into it, so if you’re thinking of starting a site/blog, just be honest and never compromise your integrity.

Something else I did from the start was track all of my stats and milestones in Google Analytics, so below are my stats (for the most part) from January 27th 2010 to January 27th 2011.  Even though stats and hits are nice, they really mean nothing.  You can’t touch them or  hold them or take them anywhere, let alone cash them in for money or doughnuts, they’re just numbers on a screen.  That being said, I have a thing about numbers and stats (and I know a lot of you do too) so that’s why I tracked them, but music site owners and bloggers seem to be guarded about them, as if they somehow show how well or how badly you’re doing.  Fuck that, I don’t give a shit, here are my stats for all to see, compare, scoff, and complain.

I don’t run an ads like a lot of sites, and I never will.  If you want to support the site (it costs almost $50 to run and I make $15 back every month) it’d be awesome if you could buy some of the music from the links provided in my posts.  It helps out the artists, the labels, and eventually me…and all money goes back into the site.  Even if you don’t buy it from me I’ll still keep this thing running.  It’s seriously fucked up how many people connect, share, love, complain, subscribe, email, tweet, like, and otherwise interact with me and the site.

If you do either of those I sincerely thank you (seriously), you’ve given me something to do other than peruse Digg and watch Latino ladies shaking their tailfeather on YouTube.  Some of you who I speak to on a regular basis I’ve become rather fond of and hope to one day be able to meet you in person, maybe let you buy me a beer, so thanks to you guys too, you know who you are.  Yeah you…..yup, lookin’ at you kid.

Let’s keep music alive by getting it out of that dress and into a sweater.

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Subscribers:

• Total: 4,663 (not including everything I’ve deleted)
• Unread: 0
• Inbox: 44
• Rejected Folder (from June 23rd): 449
• Featured Folder (from July 22nd) 141
• DMCAs: 2
• Total Number Of Twitter Follows: 1586 (108 in the last 10 days)

Visits/Pageviews:

• January 2010: 61 Visits, 135 Pageviews
• February 2010: 320 Visits, 491 Pageviews
• March 2010: 2,067 Visits, 3,334 Pageviews
• April 2010: 6,640 Visits, 11,102 Pageviews
• May 2010: 10,326 Visits, 15,185 Pageviews
• June 2010: 27,380 Visits, 37,719 Pageviews
• July 2010: 26,763 Visits, 36,361 Pageviews
• August 2010: 45,461 Visits, 63,156 Pageviews
• September 2010: 57,962 Visits, 80,589 Pageviews
• October 2010: 65,977 Visits, 94,630 Pageviews
• November 2010: 66,715 Visits, 95,234 Pageviews
• December 2010: 65,598 Visits, 91,663 Pageviews
• January 2010 (with 5 days left in the month): 73, 258 Visits, 102,767 Pageviews

Total Stats:

• Visits: 448,521
• Pageviews: 632,328

Most Viewed Posts:

• Daft Punk Derezzed Remix: 28,535 Views
• Kings Of Leon Song “Radioactive”: 12,925 Views

Top Traffic Source:

• Google: 172,312 Visits

Most Searched Term:

• Listen Before You Buy