Welcome to Goldenplec.com – One of irelands most established music websites. Goldenplec is nearly 7 years old this year (2010) and in terms of time of existance 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 was founded in August 2003 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.

In 2004 when the site was picking up in poularity 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.

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.

Polor (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

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 fesitival news, articles and community.

2010 has seen Goldenplec be included in Google News and traffic has been peaking back in the 1 to 5 million hits a month which is about where the site was at previous 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 longlist 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 recieved support from MCD for the site providing us with Quality Competitions for our Readers to go along and see gigs.

Goldenplec has thus far and for the forsee-able 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)