Yesterday passed by and I forgot to mention one important thing, IVM had it’s 8th Birthday!! Yes, that’s right, this website is 8 years old now. There is a lot of history with this site and many different versions of it have been created over the years. The site originally started as an indie online webstore on July 4th 2000 and continued that path until 2003 when it switched over to a split level presence with a record label on one and a store on the other…read more for the full story.
It stayed that way until 2004 when I closed the label and left the site up. It was up as label site for several months as I pondered what to do next. I was visiting other “zines” at the time and noticed that they weren’t keeping up with news on my favorite independent/unsigned bands and many were neglecting that whole scene in favor of music from label bands and the like. So there was something I wanted to offer that others weren’t doing and decided in the beginning of 2005 that I wanted to run a webzine directed towards a general audience with a focus on Christian independent music and entertainment. The webzine launched on February 14th 2005 to little fanfare. By the time the label was finished, this site was only getting like 2000 unique visitors a month so launching a zine was going to be tough. We stayed ahead of the game, interviewing big bands like Anberlin, Waking Ashland, Man Alive, Olivia the band, etc. and offering “Hot Downloads” from a number of artists. Slowly over time we offered more and more downloads, special features, interviews, and other methods of attracting new visitors. It started to really catch on in 2006 and has been on a steady rise ever since. Right now on Alexa.com we are ranked at 210,766 which is good for a site like ours. With the webzine, we have gone through 3 versions since I started it. Now we are moving forward with version 4.0 complete with a new logo and facelift. I just want to thank all of you for continuing to support us and for continuing to buy items in our webstore, it really helps. We are so far an ad free website (for the time being) with only ONE paid ad in the past year or more (The Wedding). What you can expect from us in the future is more Hot Downloads, more in depth interviews, more album reviews, and tons of special features plus we always keep you updated on news don’t we?
Me like a lot of other bloggers/webzine operators, have a real job and this is just a hobby. It’s run by the support of our readers and the dedication of all of our staff (especially Josh, Bloodwater, and Eric). If it wasn’t for you guys, this site wouldn’t be where it’s at today. Anyway, thanks for reading and Happy Birthday Indie Vision Music!!
