INDIEPRESS - PIGEONHOLD :: The Online Guide to Cincinnati, The Cincinnati Atlas is your complete city guide to entertainment, hotels, restaurants, events, businesses, nightlife, arts, music, movies and sports in Cincinnati ::

Well, about 3 years ago I started maintaining Hot Water Music's website. then I did a website for Panthro U.K. United 13. Then came Ampline and I decided to have a central location to cross promote the three. After thinking more about it, I gathered about 10 people up, brainstormed for a year, developed for 2 months and here we are.

Simplistically, Indiepress is a non-profit independent outreach network, promoting only selected bands we feel are doing something a bit more creative than your average pick at the local record shop on any given Sunday. We want a variety of bands with a variety of styles. We want to give people who visit the website some place they can find out about the bands they love, and still find new bands they might not have heard of...yet.

How does that work?

Selected bands are approached or chosen by submitting an online application. We design a website for them and promote it online. Bands are > able to easily update their own website, receive discounts at music stores, and work with independent booking agents online. Health insurance is an option we are looking into as well.

In order to keep the people who visit the site interested, we'll have free web-based email, record reviews, interviews, photos and MP3's added daily, streaming video and audio, and frequently updated websites of bands we feel should be in everyone's record collection. Venue and show listings, live chats with bands and local scene info will be available too.

What bands are active in Indiepress? What kind of success have they had?

Well right now Ampline, Hot Water Music, Panthro U.K. United 13, Someday I (O&O Records), Lets Crash and we've started working with Rumbleseat. We hope to have 25 more within the next year.

As far as success, Ampline has landed label support and quite a few shows, Hot Water Music cant stop them coming being on Warped Tour and all, and the others have been getting some decent press as well. So all in all, I'd say pretty good for Indiepress not even completed yet.

Is this a project you would like to do full time? It seems like the potential is there...especially if clubs participated. Indiepress would be making the world a lot smaller and inspire someone to go see a show.

I'd love to do this full time. I'm working full time and doing this five nights a week. But like I said, once its up, it should run on its own. We'll just enhance it...

We will be working with venues to list and update their shows. We want this to be a network of information that people can count on. Directions, places to eat, places to stay, record shops will be available as well. Live feeds from clubs are also a possibility.

What kind of response have you gotten from other active online indie websites?

A lot for the stage we are in right now. I can't really name names, but I hope to be working with some great companies and projects.

The scope of this project seems enormous...try avoid getting me lost in the technical jargon, but how do you accomplish this? Is everyone involved so far pulling their weight?

The size of the indiepress project is huge. Initially it was too big, but we've brought it down to a more realistic level and we'll grow from there. Basically, the site will be designed using ColdFusion, which is a development tool that allows us to store everything in a database and display information to the end user based on content being submitted by contributors in private areas. I'm a fan of open source software so a large portion of the site will be using it or will be developed by hand. Oh, and we'll have a brand spankin new web server hooked up next week, so that is pretty exciting.

All of the 10 people involved on the staff level are very dedicated. 'Workshop' areas for the administrators and contributors are starting to pop up and that is what they've been waiting for so I'm sure the pace will start to pick up very shortly. They'll be overwhelmed soon. I am still looking for web developers who want to be involved.

What is your time line like for completing Indiepress?

We have about 300 people that have emailed us so far wanting to contribute to the site. We are just working right now to get the back-end areas finished for the kind lads. We've got a team working hard on this. Most of them are contacting labels and their contributing staff, but I'm the one that is scripting the whole site. I've got a few friends out there helping me, but it's hard. I'm designing it to be fully dynamic and work on it's own. This means everyone involved has to put in their part for it to work. Since we keep setting dates over and over, we've stopped setting dates. Things will most likely just start sprouting. It's definitely more than a side project now. indiepress . pulling in the driveway...

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