We Have Launched!
Welcome my music friends from the Niagara Region!
My name is Justin and about a week ago I posted on reddit looking for advice for finding bandmates locally. Then I started to think back to when I started my first band. This was many years ago and I was living in Ottawa. I found a website called Punk Ottawa (sadly gone now). The website was this incredible resource for musicians, punk music lovers and more. I got to thinking, well I am a web developer, I have a server with a ton of extra space and hardware. I could create a resource I would love to have. I decided to go looking for a domain name and found that NiagaraMusic.ca was available (I know I can't believe it either) I bought the domain name in an instant and started planning things out.
The funny thing is originally the plan was just for musicians to find each other and start bands, but with a domain like this that felt almost criminal. It should be for everything music in the Niagara Region! So I did what I normally do on personal projects, said forget sleep and did a multi-day code fest and here is the result.
Lets look at the features!
Account types
There are 7 account types to choose from
- Music Lover
- Musician
- Band
- Venue
- Show / Event
- Music Store
First is music lover. This is if your just here to see what is up. Your dashboard turns into your own perosnal feed of all the venues, bands and musicians you like on the page.Keep up with everyone you like and what they are doing. Super fun!
All other types are starting points. Don't worry if your a musician and want to add a band listing. You can do that. If your a music store that has a jam space to rent, you can do that. You will be able to create listings in multiple categories from one account.
Community section
This is just a quick simple forum setup that you can chat about what ever you like. Ask questions, give feed back, talk about an event you went to. Just have fun chat it up! If people really start using this site I will divide this up into categories but for now just a simple make a post or respond.
Want to help out?
This is built to be a community run site. If you have something to contribute, add, help with reach out. I am all ears. Want to write articles about shows you go to, I'll set you up with blog writing acces. Got a cool idea for the site, send me your idea. Lets build this thing together into something to be proud of.
What do listings cost?
That one is super fun. Listings cost nothing! How can I possibly do this? My costs to run this site are almost nothing, sure a little electricityhere a little internet bill there, but in reality I am already paying those so.... I would rather build something cool for the community!
How do we grow?
First is word of mouth. If you know a musician, a band, a venue owner, a music store owner, share this site with them. The more people talking about this site the more people will find us.
Next is this website is optimized for SEO and Google Search. I can not begin to explain how powerful having the domain NiagaraMusic.ca is here. This will help us rank right to the top. This in the long term will provide a ton of exposure to the site, and the musicians, venues and bands on it. Awesome right?
Finally from time to time if I have a little extra money in the beer fund, I'll throw a little at Facebook Marketing. (Ok not really facebook I care about but instagram is part of that) This is a powerful way to drive a ton of traffic. Although this is not a priority as I believe we can grow this site better together.
Welp that's about it for this novel! Lets get to rocking this joint.
Cheers Justin