Thursday, January 12, 2012

The History of the Dave's Music Database Blog


Check out these books by Dave Whitaker available through DavesMusicDatabase.com or Amazon.

Also check the Dave’s Music Database Facebook page for daily music-related posts.


The third anniversary of the DMDB blog is right around the corner (January 22). It has come a long way in three years! That first post, entitled “How to Get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”, mocked that institution’s biases with five observations about what will (or won’t) lead to canonization in Cleveland.

A couple weeks later, I put up the post “2009 Grammy Nominees for Album of the Year”. I analyzed the five hopefuls for the big prize and correctly predicted Robert Plant and Alison Krauss would take home the gold for Raising Sand.

I didn’t post again until July. By year’s end, I’d put up a whopping 13 posts. I upped the ante in 2010 with 14 posts. Things didn’t really get moving until mid-way through 2011 when I changed the focus of the blog from essays on music-related topics to more objective snapshots of musical history tied to that particular day.

The second DMDB publication gathered all the essays posted here on the blog. Click on the book cover to go to the DMDB website where you can order the book.



The move paid off in spades. Prior to the thematic switch, my biggest month was September 2009 with 422 hits. I more than doubled that number in June 2011 with the new approach. The numbers have gone up every month since. December 2011 saw more than 7300 hits and January 2012 looks to be on pace to double that number! Over the blog’s three-year life time, it has been seen by more than 31,000 pairs of eyeballs. The top post of all time is “Live Aid: July 13, 1985” with 1500+ hits, more than double the runner-up, “The Top 50 Pink Floyd Songs”.

Graph shows number of hits each month from May 2009 to December 2011.



I haven’t done lots of research to figure out how to garner such numbers and am not entirely certain why my numbers keep growing by leaps and bounds each month. I have followed a few basic tips which I think have made the difference. When I switched from essay to daily history format, that meant two things – I put up daily content and posts were shorter, generally 300-500 words. I also added images and video. However, I think most of my hits have simply come from google searches which land on the key words I’ve connected to each blog.

I don’t know exactly how it has happened, but I’m grateful to everyone who’s either read faithfully since the beginning or merely stumbled across an entry here and there. It has been a great journey and one I plan to continue indefinitely.




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