Tonight I decided to try my usual username and password I had used for most of undergrad, and it worked.
This site is an exciting project for me. It was formative.
When I look back on what I wrote, I often cringe.
Everything was sick, and everything was dropping.
A lot has changed since we first started trying to make this site a thing in 2008.
YouTube was three years old when we started, Spotify was 2, SoundCloud didn’t exist, Instagram wouldn’t be founded for two more years, Vevo would launch a year after us, and here we were.
Creating content on the internet about music we loved. We had to host our MP3s – bootlegs, shared, anything.
And we had to find an audience – through search, myspace, and Facebook.
I didn’t know I was “growth hacking” when I figured out how to feed the hype machine what it wanted so that it could drive us insane amounts of traffic.
I eventually found it hilarious when they removed the blog from their service when I tried to launch a music startup.
At that time, we were one of the most followed blogs on the service.
This whole salacious sound thing was a bit like thunder in a bottle.
It never quite struck, but it had its time and passed.
Along with it, the contributors, editors, and originators passed through it to various places.
This site was started to give Cailen a platform as a DJ and me a path into the music industry. It became more than that as several alums have gone on to have careers in music, content and, in Cailen’s case, software engineering.
I’m continually shocked at all the people who contributed to this site at one point or another. May old friends, some became friends, and others I barely knew but always knew of because of their contributions to the site became managers and label execs.
University was the best thing that ever happened to me because it pushed me to where I started this site with a few great friends.
Reflecting on this site which will be 15 years old this year, I can only think about how thankful I am that it found me.
It pushed me out of my comfort zone, gave me something I wanted to build and create, and allowed me to meet many of my best friends, co-conspirators, partners, and mentors.
I would say I was lucky, but I also took something a ran with it as far and as fast as I could.
That momentum kickstarted my career – that momentum taught me that I could build things.
I can’t believe it has been almost 15 years. I no longer want the same things, but reopening this can of worms reminds me of why I did.
The same desire to discover things and introduce them to those around me is alive and well. These days it’s indoor plants and pots and how to care for them.
When I started writing on this site, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else then; it got in the way of everything that wasn’t what I wanted. And I’m thankful for that.
If only Grammarly had exited in 2008, my writing would have been much more precise, and I’d be far less embarrassed reading my earlier works.
No one has posted on this site for nearly two years. And I don’t know if anyone ever will again. But I’m glad it’s here. An archive of my early 20s, in case I ever forget where I first found the spark that I could do my own thing.