Avant Music News

Ten years ago today, I posted the first three articles on a web site that I called “Avant Music News.”

I’m not much for sentiment, or for assigning importance to big round numbers. But, I cannot discount the impact that AMN has had on my life. Beyond spending 20-30 minutes every morning sorting through submissions every morning and then doing the same in the afternoons, AMN has been a musical journey for me. Listening to diverse music, meeting interesting people, and hopefully doing my small part to get the word out about interesting events and releases happening the world over. I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll never be able to listen to all of the good music coming out because it just isn’t possible in one lifetime. But I hope that I can point out its existence, if nothing else.

AMN has gotten bigger than just me, which is a good thing. More people are writing for us, and our readers number in the thousands and span the globe. And they all like weird music. I find that oddly comforting.

While I don’t plan for the future of AMN, at least not explicitly, I hope it continues to slowly grow and branch out. In other words, I have no clear idea where the next ten years will lead, but I’m looking forward to them.

Thanks.

Happy October. Fall is here, and is much welcome after a hot and dry summer in Chicago.

AMN has been busy lately, but in a good way. We’ve been receiving tons of information, including plenty of fall season performances from out the world. Additionally, our reviewers have been cranking out posts, many of which have become popular with musicians and fans alike. Also, in the last month, I’ve received about 50 new releases for ostensible review or as candidates for our Picks of the Week, which has been par for the course of late.

The one downside to all of this busy-ness is my inability to stay on top of it. After making several valiant efforts to clean out my AMN inbox, I’ve hit a steady state of about 50-80 unread messages. I know that some of these are probably stale, announcing events that took places weeks or months ago. I apologize for that and for not being on the ball in general. Despite efforts to reduce this number, I’ve been unable to do so. I’ve been unusually busy at work for the last 3-4 months, which is the main reason that I’ve slipped so far behind.

But these problems are good to have. The quirky, weird unclassifiable music that permeates AMN is on the rise. Or, at least, holding steady. Traffic to AMN is up, as is our following on Twitter and Facebook. There seems to be more going on than I can keep up with, and I’ve had to make hard decisions lately about what to cover.  I prefer to limit AMN to 4-8 relevant postings per day rather than unleash the floodgates on you, the reader. Nonetheless, this should not stop anyone from contacting us with tour dates, new release news, promos, and so on. I will eventually clear out the backlog, and I do listen to all music submissions.

As arbitrary milestones go, AMN passed 15,000 posts earlier this month. In April, 2013 we will reach our 10th anniversary. Honestly, I’m not sure how or if to celebrate.

In random show-attendance news, I’ll be attending this Saturday’s Lampo show, featuring Okkyung Lee and David Berhman, in Chicago. I’m also going to try to make the Wednesday or Thursday evening (November 7th & 8th, respectively) show of the Umbrella Music Festival. If you’ll be at any of those shows and would like to say hi, drop me a line.

Also, if you’d like to join our staff of reviewers, send me a writing sample and an idea of what you’d like to cover. I’ve got no end to the incoming material.

Finally, on a personal note, my kids and I have designed and published a card game. It has nothing to do with music, but check it out here.

Our feed on Facebook has been down since Friday.  So far, all of our attempts to get it up and running again have failed.  While we’re looking into the issue, please feel free to follow us here, on the web site, via Twitter, or via our RSS feed.

Thanks.

UPDATE: 6/5/12 – I’ve rerouted our Facebook feed to be direct rather than to be based on our Twitter feed. That seems to have solved the problem. If you follow the Facebook feed only, visit our web site to find out what you’ve missed.

As you may have noticed, we have a new site.

Long, painful story boiled down: AMN was getting a lot of bot/spider/crawler traffic, as well as high-volume requests from various locations attempting index, download or copy the entire site.  My (now previous) hosting service had been complaining about this for over two weeks.  I spent about 35 hours over that period of time doing everything I could to reduce the load.  Load was reduced, but not to their satisfaction.  I was frustrated, losing sleep, getting behind at work, and not spending enough time with the family.  Ultimately, the problem the site was having was beyond my control.

So, I’ve moved the site to another provider that should be able to handle the load issues.  I hope.  I’m going to give it a couple of weeks here before I declare success.

In the mean time, there are a few features that we no longer have at AMN, and some new features to try out as well.  Despite the site being fully operational at this point, I’ll be working over the next few days to get a few minor things in order.

One difficulty that some of you may have is that you might be getting redirected to the old site.  This problem should go away over the next several days, as DNS records are propagated.  If you’re still having problems by the end of the week, drop me a line.

I appreciate your patience during the transition.

Last week we conducted a survey on whether AMN should include original content, such as reviews, interviews, profiles, opinion pieces, and/or other content.

The results of the survey were overwhelmingly in favor of doing so.

I’m encouraged by this feedback, and would like to starting including original content on a trial basis. However, I’m still trying to get my head around exactly how to do so. I’d like to provide high-quality writing, but in a such a way that the limited time that I can dedicate to this site does not cause an unnecessary bottleneck.

Quite a few responders indicated that they would like to contribute original content. If you were one of these people, please write me at mike@avantmusicnews.com. In your email, indicate what type of original content you’re interested in providing, and a writing sample if applicable. We can take it from there. This is a great opportunity for those of you who would like a creative outlet and an opportunity to be published on a site that is regularly read by about 1000 people who are into the avant / creative / weird music scenes.

Also, if you like doing album reviews, I get quite a few promo releases. I barely have the time to listen to these releases, much less write about them. If you’re interested in album reviews, I may be able to share these promos with you.

In any case, I’d like to thank everyone for the feedback. Much appreciation.

I’m putting AMN on hold for a few weeks to take care of some personal business. See you some time in August.

A few things going on this week. First, we surpassed 1000 fans on Facebook. That’s really neat, and not something I expected to happen so quickly. On a completely unrelated note, I will be at the Unbound Festival show tomorrow night in Chicago. Drop me a line if you’d like to say hi. On another unrelated and personal note, I completed law school this week and am graduating on Sunday. This marks the end of four years that, well, I thought would never end. Finally, probably due to finishing up, I am completely swamped with unread emails at the moment. Please bear with me, as it will take a few days to get through my overflowing inbox. Thanks.

Just a quick note to celebrate a momentous occasion. No, not the royal wedding.

Today is the eighth anniversary of AMN. With nearly 1000 likes on Facebook, over 500 Twitter followers, and tons of people sending in material, it has been a fun, if not overwhelming, existence.

I run this site mostly by myself, in my free time. I work, have a family, and have been taking evening courses the last few years. This means that as much as I’d like to interact more with all of you, I’m limited in that regard. Thanks for your patience in dealing with my terse responses to your emails, when I respond at all.

Change occurs slowly at AMN. One of the latest features I’ve added is the ability to “like” and comment on articles from Facebook. You’ll see this option on the AMN main page, as well as each article’s dedicated page. While we had had commenting in the past, I turned it off for the last couple of years due to hackers out there using it to gain control of the site. I’m hoping that this mechanism proves to be more workable.

That’s all. Enjoy.

Hi everyone.  At this time of year, we all get more than a little busy, myself included.

I’ve been receiving tons of material to look through, listen to, and so on over the last few weeks.  I’ve been giving priority to the timely matters (e.g., concert announcements and simple posts), and as a result have been neglecting a lot of other things.  Many of you submit music and I appreciate that and try to listen to all of it.  Nonetheless, I’m way behind.

My schedule will be clearing up after the 20th.  At that point (if not a little sooner), I suspect that I’ll have the time to catch up.  So please don’t be concerned if I’m slow to respond to email.  I’ll get there.

Thanks for the support.

Just recently, AMN achieved two rather arbitrary milestones: 400 followers on Twitter and 600 fans on Facebook.

I’m still amazed and pleased that so many people like weird music.