Site Story

Welcome to Goldenplec.com – One of Ireland’s most established music websites. Goldenplec is now 9 years old this year (2011) and in terms of time of existence it is in an elite bands of music sites for Ireland which have last such a length. Sites such as Cluas, Thumped, Irish Unsigned, Irish Music Central whom all have been open for 5+ years and to each their credit are still going strong. Sites like Drop-d.ie, Irish Bands List, Music From Ireland, Nialler9, State.ie are adding to the depth of irish music sites and are all gaining in years running all the time. Starting these sites and keeping them running are 2 different things. Goldenplec is proud to be a part of these elite band of site promoting the quality product that is Irish Music.

Goldenplec in 2003 from WaybackMachine

Goldenplec was founded in August 2002 but originally went under the name Irish Music Mania for one year. That name was dropped in August 2003 in favour of Goldenplec.com. The site was started by Aidan Cuffe who has a degree in computer science and has an interest in web design which led to the first version of the site. His main cohort all these years has been Kevin Meagher who has been part of the site ideals, concepts, design and has helped run everything since day one.

In 2004 when the site was picking up in popularity the administrators at the time, Aidan Cuffe and Kevin Meagher decided to use the popularity of the site to organise 2 charity gigs for Temple Street Childrens Hospital.

2 Nights were held divide by genre, A decidedly more indie night and a rock night.

August 19th Saw the Indie night which was headlined by La Rocca, also playing that night were Juno Falls and Automata (Ken Mchugh cut back to acoustic), JackKnife and The LSD’s (2 bands who were native to the site)

August 27th was the Rock night which was headlined by Fairuza and featured The 66e and Jaded Sun and Th Flares. Only 4 bands played this time due to OnOff and White Line Fever Pulling out of the gig, OnOff due to a touring commitment with Reel Big Fish (Whom we interviewed the night before) and White Line Fever due to illness

Tickets for the gig were a mere €5 and the audience were given a proper audio treat

Overall we raised €1600 for the Temple Street Childrens Hospital and we thoroughly enjoyed the organising and meeting the bands involved whom all played without a fee.

Charity Gig Snaps

In February 2005 in the wake of the Tsunami in South East Asia we organised another charity gig this time organised by the former members of jackknife. Daniel, Mick and Ciaran did a great job organising the gig and promoting it using the Goldenplec vehicle.

Polar (now Pilot-light), Delorentos, Me in the Park and The Licks (Formerly Jackknife) played on the night of February 4th in the Sugar Club, Tickets were €10

Goldenplec in 2006 from WaybackMachine

Since then Goldenplec has changed its site in 2 massive changes and due to commitments of the men involved at Goldenplec there has been little in the way of gigs and the site at times has been neglected. The relaunch of Goldenplec Summer 08 is hoping to bring Goldenplec back to the basis of what made Goldenplec popular in the first place, gig and festival news, articles and community.

2010 has seen Goldenplec be included in Google News and traffic has peaked back in the 1 to 5 million hits a month which is about where the site was at earlier popularity. In fact in March 2010 we hit 16m hits, but realistically it was around 300,000 unique page views and 70,000+ unique visitors. Goldenplec was nominated and shortlisted for the Irish Web Awards at the end of 2009 and was placed on the long list for the Irish Blog Awards 2010 and will hopefully make the shortlist too, and who knows maybe go on to win it. We also have received support from MCD for the site providing us with Quality Competitions for our Readers to go along and see gigs.

2011 has been a very busy year for Goldenplec. We co-founded the Digital Socket Awards, Aidan (Editor) was one of the 10 judges for the Choice Music Prize. We started our radio show initially as a podcast talk show and it has evolved into a show on 2XM every Tuesday at 11pm and Saturday at 8pm. We got aired on 2FM in October 2011 as part of 2XM on 2FM. Aidan was again involved in recording videos for RTE for their Red Radar project and has written multiple articles for Two Tube. In October 2011 we were nominated, shortlisted and amazingly won “Best Music Website” at the Irish Web Awards in the Mansion House, October 22nd. This was a huge honour for us, our first award in our 9 years of covering music in Ireland and are delighted to have won. Over the course of the year our writers and photographers continually outdid themselves creating amazing reviews, interviews, features, photographs and without this amazing team we would not have made the short-list for an award like this.

Goldenplec has thus far and for the forseeable future remained a not for profit music news site where any advertising barely covers our costs. We hope we can keep the site that way for as long as we can humanly run it, providing the top music news in Ireland to our readers via the Website, RSS, mailing lists, Facebook and Twitter

Regards

Aidan (Administrator)

Goldenplec in 2007 from WaybackMachine

Goldenplec in 2011 from WaybackMachine