With this post, I have reached something of a milestone with The CerebralRift. So far this year I have written 200 articles, not including the show notes for The CerebralMix podcasts. But it’s more than just reaching that many articles this year that makes this a worthy point for celebrating.
This site has gone from receiving less than 100 views a day, to over 650 per day in about 18 months (the highest I’ve seen is nearly 800 views in a single day). We’ve also crossed 150,000 views since I started keeping track about a year ago. We’ve gone from seeing no submissions for review, to seeing as many as 10 a week. And, on the social network side this site now has thousands of followers on Twitter, Facebook, G+, vk.com, and other sites. During this time I have also outgrown one hosting provider and relocated the site on a new provider that has greatly improved the overall reliability of the site.
Building this strong of a following in this period amazes me, but it should also be amazing to all the readers, artists and others who have been apart of this site in one manner or another. I couldn’t have accomplished this without everyone in the Creative Commons and Netlabel communities supporting this work.
So, now I think it’s time for some changes. But, don’t worry, this isn’t anything bad. In fact, if anything, it will be about improving The CerebralRift, and paving the way for more improvements in the future. So, the rest of this week is going to be a bit different as I work on some long ignored plans, including:
- Revising the home page. This will consist of making the front page of the site look a little more like the publication that I want it to be, with specific groupings for features, reviews, interviews and podcasts.
- Revising the submissions forms. I’ve mentioned a few times lately that my review queue has become an avalanche of music. A great “problem” to have, yet I can’t help thinking there needs to be a bit of work done to balance the review submissions with the published reviews. Doing so will hopefully broaden the appeal of The CerebralRift to more readers.
- Restructuring the menu to make finding submission forms, and other features easier.
- Putting out the call for more writers to help expand the coverage. While I’ve done all the writing so far, I want to get into other areas: more features, reviews of other Creative Commons projects (such as books / eBooks, audio books, and art work).
- And a few more things that I want to leave as surprises.
So, while I am busy working on the site, here are a few pieces that you might have missed the first time around that I think are worth checking out again:
- The Cousin Silas interview, and the review of Sounds of Silas. He’s one of the most prolific ambient artists in the netlabel community, and if you still aren’t familiar with his work, please take this time to check him out.
- The group that brought me back to this project was Space Weirdo. The review of Press Start is worth checking out.
- The interview with DJ Habett is one that I think is important when considering art / music as a form of therapy.
- One of my favorite discoveries of the past year and a half has been Dr. Mindflip. If you haven’t checked out the reviews of Is Itching To Play or Every Waking Moment I highly recommend reading the reviews and giving him a listen.
- And there’s so much more for me to cover. Perhaps it’s best to recommend checking out some of my previous attempts to bring together some information about the community, like 15 Must Hear Releases of 2014 (So Far) and 10 CC Musicians To Follow.
- Beyond that, explore the site. There are lots of artists like Small Colin, Spiedkiks, Mystified, Jack Hertz, Weldroid, Joe Frawley, and others highly worthy of reading about and checking out their music. If you want to get into the more eclectic side of things, you can check out my podcast: The CerebralMix.
I’ll leave you with that list for now, and encourage you to explore even more. Thank you to all who have supported me thus far, and hopefully will be taking a few steps forward during this short break. See you in about a week.
Oh yes, a final note: The CerebralMix for 2014-10-18 will be released tomorrow as usual.
