It’s August 1st, 2012. Ten years ago Goldenplec started as a fledgling idea of two bored teenagers, to start a music website on our own terms. Ten years on from this launch, we have a music website that truly is defined and operated on our own terms.
When we started the website, it was with a hope to foster a music loving community and provide useful music news as a free service. For a chunk of our early days our forum was busy and vibrant, however the emergence of social networks slowed down the community and we eventually removed that aspect from the site and have focused largely on the content of the site. Over that past four to five years we feel we have grown year on year into one of the most comprehensive sites for music in Ireland on the web and hopefully we will continue to grow each additional year we survive.
Goldenplec is powered by its volunteer team, a community of writer and photographers who work for each other for the good of the site. Consistently they have provided us with immense coverage of events including our latest social efforts of covering gigs using live tweeting and Facebooking. These people ARE Goldenplec, they are the reason thousands view the site each day and use it as the resource it has become.
Our ten years have seen us in almost every venue in the country, covering bands of all genre’s from countries all over the world, including a huge chunk of Ireland’s amazing talent that continually year on year, is throwing its weight around showing the quality and talent existing on these shores. We have been to and covered almost every music festival in Ireland. We were asked to be on the judging panel for the Choice Music Prize award, we have lent our opinion for multiple other similar judging positions, we were able to get involved with Christmas FM which is one of our favourite entities. We have sent thousands of people to gigs over the years as competition winners, something we love doing.
Though Goldenplec is at its heart a hobby for many of us, and a platform for some, who hope to pursue a career in journalism or photography, it is an entity that has given quite richly to those of us involved. We’ve seen lots of sites join us since we started, and plenty of them have disappeared, we don’t know how many more years Goldenplec can survive but we will keep plugging away for as long as we can, complimenting the now rich music coverage Ireland enjoys. From the elderly uncles of Thumped and Hotpress, to our younger but equally amazing counterparts in AU, State, Nialler9 and the multitude of music bloggers, who make covering music in Ireland a purpose and pleasure. The big and small promoters, from MCD to Aiken to POD who have given us the access and capacity to cover the bigger events in Ireland. The small promoters, still going and long since gone, who like us promoted small, unknown and upcoming bands. The PR agencies who have given us prizes from their corporate clients, I-believe who provided the ability to cover our costs, the sponsors we had on charity events from the venues like The Button Factory, Sugar Club, Malahide Yacht Club and those who put money behind our ventures like Meteor, Lyons and Johnston Mooney and O’Brien did recently with our Coast to Coast event. The radio stations who supported our ventures and provided much-needed coverage.
And finally you, the reader, without you there would be no reason to run Goldenplec. At the heart of everything we do, it’s 100% reader orientated. We appreciate everyone of you who have come through the browser door in our 10 years ,which is now into the 10 million page views region. Last year we won the Irish Blog Award for Best Music Site, something we didn’t think was possible. Then again we didn’t think getting to 10 years old would be possible either.
We are Goldenplec. We are dreamers, and we are TEN years old.
Thank you.
Here are some images from throughout our ten years. Logo changes through the years, some gig snaps from charity events we ran and more. We hope you enjoy them.
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