Dear Friends,
Just a few words to wish you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season, and to thank you for your patronage and support in 2009…
This past year was a tough one for many families and businesses. Many online music companies either went bust or sold out for fire sale prices this year. It was also a challenging year for OurStage. But I’m pleased to announce that, thanks to you, we still enjoyed substantial growth this year and are now poised to make 2010 our most exciting year ever—especially for our fans and artists. We began 2009 with less than 400,000 registered users and about 2 million unique monthly visitors. We are ending 2009 with over 1.7 million registered users and over 4 million unique monthly visitors. Even more exciting, the site now hosts over 110,000 artists, up from the 65,000 from last year. On the technical side, our development team successfully transitioned the look, feel and functionality of the site in order to transform this simple contest site into a complete music-discovery and promotions platform. Heading into 2010, OurStage is armed with greater opportunities for exposure and promotion for our artists than ever before.
In January we will launch our new “Best of” section of the site—tracking top-ranked artists over time, not just month to month. We will also announce a new partnership with one of the world’s largest media giants. This partnership will give top-ranked artists a host of new opportunities for exposure, including:
- Major music festival slots
- Chances to showcase music in popular games
- Chances to have music and/or band appear on TV
- Opportunities to have music and / or band promoted on a range of other online music sites (through OurStage partners)
In addition, OurStage will be re-launch our Marketplace offering in Q1, which sat mostly dormant throughout 2009. This revised version will have much-improved usability, will offer artists the ability to post ads and search for items or gigs of all types (not just venues), and will offer a host of additional tools and features for premium OurStage members. Be on the lookout for this revised feature sometime between February and March.
On another note, I’d like to reiterate how important you, our community, are both to us and the reshaping of the music industry. Our vision is to change the way artists get discovered and promoted in the 21st century. This is only possible if we succeed at attracting, retaining and motivating a large community of artists and fans—to spread the word and participate in what we believe is a more fair, democratic way to filter greatness from the millions of artists online and to help these artists launch their careers. We appreciate your participation and thank you in advance for continuing to be a part of a movement to change the future of the industry for the better.
In closing, I’d just like to salute all of you who have chosen to pursue your dreams— whatever they may be —rather than just talk about them, and to offer my humble words of encouragement as you strive to achieve them. Perseverance is required of all of us, on our path to any worthy goal. Nevertheless, if at all possible this holiday season, please reward yourself with at least a few days of peace, relaxation and reflection upon all that is good in your life and in the world.
Wishing you and your loved ones a happy and safe holiday season,
BC
December 19th marked the first show of The Street Dogs’ two-night, hometown gig at the 
