Almost 11 years ago, May 2004 I started writing an introduction piece to each issue of Rift Magazine. I did 25 of them. Sometimes they were ramblings, and sometimes they made a point.
The first one I wrote, I mentioned I was 35 years old and maybe had a streak of grumpy old man in me. Now I am forty-five, almost forty-six. I should be grumpy times two by now.
Luckily, some of those musicians and bands we talked about back then are still relevant today. When that first issue came out, Cloud Cult was still a three piece, and Doomtree was just releasing their first album.
Myspace was still a thing back then, and Facebook had just launched, but it was only available to colleges at the time.
The final print edition of Rift came out in the fall of 2008, and my intro for that issue was on the internet and all the things that were happening because of it. It was about maintaining and updating websites, myspace pages, facebook and everything else.
Well, it’s 2015, and I want to talk about keeping relevant. Mainly, because every month or so I get people asking me about Rift. It might be just to spark up a conversation, but then I realize people aren’t paying attention. Seven years have passed since the last print issue has been out, and sometimes people act like it’s still coming out. Like they saw that last issue weeks ago.
I get the time lapse thing, when is the last time I saw you? A year ago, oh five years ago. So I get that, and I am not that offended when they don’t know it’s online still. It’s a challenge, to stay relevant when you are creating anything. So now with this re-launch of the website and new ideas, I am ready to take on this relevance thing.
It also might be a great life lesson, you need to stay relevant. As a person, as a business, an artist, a musician and everything else. Doing things is being someone.
We need to re-invent many things, during a life. Just as industries decline and then other industries take over. The music industry is way different than it was ten years ago, the book industry, movies, television and everything else is changing.
We need to support and keep relevant everything we love, or it will disappear. I would like the new Rift website to represent this. Support the independent and any artists that make us feel good.
I never thought the music industry decline was due to file sharing or streaming. I always thought it was about choices. With the internet, phones, tablets, Netflix, Video Games and all the other things to do out there, things were bound to decline in the entertainment industries.
Music blogs, who has time to read them. It seems that it might come down to a drive to self-promote. It’s the same with all creative projects; you need to let people know you’re there. Kickstarter and other crowdfunding campaigns, seem like they would be easy. The ones that make it, those people let me know about it almost every day. It’s not easy, you have to be a little bit of a nuisance.
So with this new website, I suppose I could sit back and take an it’s there, and they will come approach. That almost never works, and it has taken me this long to figure it out. The novelty wears off, and people forget. It’s time for me to break out of my self-promotion shell and scream it from the internet, from e-mail and maybe some street corners. If you get annoyed, I apologize in advance.
feel free to e-mail me your complaints – rich@riftmagazine.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.