2000-2001: MusicMania becomes a concept thought by future co-founder and CEO Alan Ho, then a high school sophomore who became interested in the music world after he got a boom box for his 16th birthday. By late 2001, MusicMania started to become more concrete, a BASIC calculator program that showcased several music charts, an important component that became the basis of what MusicMania is today.
2001-2002: Still a concept despite it being a graphing calculator program but Ho soon mastered the art of rating music by simply either listening to the airwaves or poring over different national airplay charts from different sources. Also that year, Ho learned that he was accepted to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana for the 2002-2003 school year.
2002-2003: After weeks into Ho's first year at Purdue, MusicMania became a website on September 22, 2002 with him and fellow classmate and student Peter Burke as founders of the site. Their motto was 'The Best Damn Music Experience, Period.' They dreamed of changing the music industry with a balanced focus and not being dictated by the record labels in terms of content. The duo by November tabbed James Pruitt and Michael Riehle to round out the developmental team. By the end of 2002, it was clear that the site was on the cusp of rising...
2003 was admittedly the low and the high year of MusicMania, which started to crumble under lack of communication, internal problems, personal problems, and the rising tide of illegal file-sharing of music across the Purdue campus. At one point, the site couldn't get past 100 visitors a month, 10 times less than what the site got one month early that year. The site shut down for the summer but through some coaxing from some people at Purdue, Ho took it back online and decided the site needed a content change, philosophy change, and it was that time the site began to dabble in the indie music world.
To close out the year, MusicMania brought in a guy who would aid in the changes that now have made the now Musiqtone into the site it is today, Ryan Cerbus. Ryan happened to live in the same dorm as Alan Ho and while on one of his advertising exploits, he caught the attention of Cerbus and after some talks, Ryan became the new indie music director and head music reviewer. He quickly proved himself to be a savvy writer, bringing in edgy content and insight that started to gain the attention of whatever readers the site had. But in the following year, Ryan helped lay down the foundation of change that turned the now Musiqtone the rising powerhouse its become.
2004: Ryan became the new project director for what would be the most ambitious redesign effort yet when it became known to Ho and Burke that he was a web designer and developer in his spare time aided by his own major, Visual Communication and Design. It was also that year the site finally made the big splash as MTV's Campus Invasion announced that they were stopping by Purdue in late April for a concert. MTV Campus Invasion brought the music site major underground publicity and when it was all over, the team managed to garner another major enemy in their school paper, whose review of the concert was met with major contempt by the student body while there was massive exposure of MusicMania's review, which included pictures and some sound bites from Hoobastank and Lostprophets. In May, the site begun the transformation of itself, becoming a well-designed site with interactive content, new features, and better organization. By the start of the new school year, MusicMania finished its renovation and unveiled the new look MusicMania by the end of August. Then another event happened during the fall that would give MusicMania the powerful backing it needed to stay alive.
Two years after MusicMania called for the stopping of file-sharing and the embracing of legal music providers, Purdue in the summer of '04 explored the legal music options and settled on CDigix, an Englewood, CO-based digital media firm and deployed their services in October. After checking it out, MusicMania began an advertising blitz and its endorsement of CDigix, calling it an important victory. "We had been fighting tooth and nail to turn the tide of illegal activity away," said Ho at the time. "Having CDigix here at Purdue represents a major victory over those who don't think we're fighting a noble cause."
The blitz soon caught the eye of CDigix's president and founder, Brett Goldberg. Impressed with the site, its goals, philosophy, and the ad blitz, he contacted Ho via e-mail conveying his thanks and the offer of help. This snowballed into a one-on-one meeting between the now nascent music site and their marketing team, headed by Jerad Harbaugh. Neither knew that this meeting would become a business relationship that still goes on today. "I didn't know who they were," said Peter Burke at the time, "But once I knew who they were and what they could do for us and what we could do for them, I knew something special was going to happen for us."
"I came into the meeting with nothing to expect," said Ho. "But in 30 minutes, we left with something that was bigger."
Near the end of the year, armed with renewed confidence, a new sense, philosophy, and plan, MusicMania began once again to transform themselves...and to rid themselves of the past.
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First half 2005- Before 2004 closed out, the duo announced that MusicMania was changing names, in an effort to distiguish themselves from a search portal that had the rights to their domain name and injected spyware and adware on to users' computers. To begin the year, MusicMania eventually settled on the name Musiqtone and started to create new logos and faceplates. Also, main operations at Purdue split as founder Ho was sent back to his hometown of Hoffman Estates, Illinois. In February, MusicMania became Musiqtone and also announced that they were leaving the Purdue University web servers by the end of the month, they tabbed Indianapolis-based CarbonBlock LLC as their new web hosting provider. "We felt that now that we are armed with a new name and sense of purpose, we were not going to stall momentum and our progress," said Ho.
On March 14, 2005, Musiqtone became Musiqtone.com and now hosted by CarbonBlock LLC. The new web host allowed Ho and Burke to finally tailor content to their needs as well as introduce new features like message boards and blogs. Also, Musiqtone began to start looking for ways to tap into unknown talent and that was on Myspace and their music portal. In April, the site became an AOL Music content affiliate, ending officially Musiqtone's association with MTV. The new association allowed Musiqtone to retailor its mainstream content as well as cover the mainstream faster than before with AOL's First View. Also the site reported record traffic numbers, cracking 50,000 hits for the first time ever.
The previous month. Musiqtone relaunched You Gotta Know as a feature dedicated to unearthing some of music's hidden gems as well as small-town talent. Dallas acts wakingNorman and Michael Celedon went back to back and in May, Musiqtone reentered their home market at Purdue by tabbing Purdue student Amanda Shelly as that month's You Gotta Know.
In June, Musiqtone finally emerged out of the shadow they went into six months back when they finally cracked the 2000 mark in visitors and hit an all-time high in hits with well over 60,000. This was aided by a late promotional opportunity for a North Carolina-based musician who was up and coming and already wielded an incredible fanbase and connections to some of music's rising stars. In July, Musiqtone finally cracked the six-figures in hits and nearly 10,000 visitors as the You Gotta Know feature gained in credibility and stature as well as their continued affiliation with AOL Music.
Present: Musiqtone has become a rising name in the music industry, combining affiliations with AOL Music, Rolling Stone, and Billboard News Bulletin with their indie and underground flair. The site now averages roughly between 4000-5000 hits a day and about 2500 visitors a day and gobbling up almost 3 GB of bandwidth a month. It figures to increase as word continues to get out and as their main partner CDigix continues to gobble up new schools and markets for their services. In August, the site recorded its largest numbers ever, getting closer 350,000 hits and 51,000 visitors. Musiqtone's biggest feature is You Gotta Know, introducing past Knows like Nathan Morris, Curtis Peoples, Lydia Gray, and Dex & Kelly to new and broader audiences.
Musiqtone now has a new face, with the constants being Ho and Burke but now flanked by Cerbus, head music reviewer Adam Aguirre, and staff James Burke and Al Hilton, all Purdue students. All 6 men have a goal in mind: to make waves of change in the music industry. After two-plus years of turmoil, internal problems, failed expectations, and experimentation, Musiqtone is finally becoming the dream both Ho and Burke dreamt of so long ago in 2002.
"After three years at doing this, I can finally say that our dream is coming to life," says Ho. "We've made so many mistakes in the three years Peter and I have done this, the kinds that would sink any small business concept...and yet we haven't made a cent yet."
"We hope that Musiqtone becomes a beacon of change in the music industry. The industry has become marginalized and its misinforming people about what good music is," says Burke. "I do have to say that its been one hell of a ride and I'm not getting off."
So what's in the future for Musiqtone? The site will continue to reach their goal of a half-million hits, considered by many the break-even point before online advertisers start pouring revenue into any nascent site. Also Musiqtone has launched a new record label concept, tentatively named Yellow Brick. Rockers A Line of Symmetry and former Musiqtone You Gotta Know Amanda Shelly are the current signees to the concept, which will be of the developmental variety, developing talent before letting them go to bigger and better pastures.
The future of Musiqtone is burning bright now...
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