''Dotmusic'' was a music
webzine that existed as a standalone website from 1 June 1995 to December 2003. Initially intended as the web complement to the UK music industry trade magazine ''
Music Week'', the site was relaunched in December 1998 as a website for music fans with features, interviews and the UK charts. The site was edited by Andy Strickland and among its most prominent writers were Nimalan Nadesalingam (Nimalan Nades) who contributed artist biographies and
James Masterton
James Masterton (born 2 September 1973) is a music writer and columnist, his work focusing on the UK Singles Chart having been an online fixture on various sites since the 1990s. Masterton is also a producer for talkSPORT, and has worked on air ...
who contributed a weekly UK chart commentary. After an internship in summer 2000,
Alex Donne Johnson used his experience at ''Dotmusic'' to go on and found the urban music website ''
RWDmag'', which later become one of the key players in the development of
grime,
UK garage and
dubstep online.
''Dotmusic'' included one of the earliest pay download music services, ''Dotmusic On Demand''. It was also famous for its discussion forum, one of the most popular and active message boards in the UK. As well as forums devoted to various artists, there was a free-for-all, off-topic forum called Dotmusic Lite, known as DotLite for short. A number of DotCons - conventions for ''Dotmusic'' users - were held in cities around the UK from 1999 onwards.
There was a major online marketing campaign in 1999, followed by a TV press and online campaign in 2000. The site was regularly in the top ten sites for children.
''Dotmusic'' was originally owned by
Miller Freeman, Inc.
Miller Freeman, Inc., was a San Francisco-based publisher of trade books and business magazines, as well as a manager of trade and industry expositions. It was an innovative force in business technology and communications in the 1990s until i ...
, before being sold to
BT in 2002. In 2003, the site was sold to
Yahoo!["Yahoo! joins up dots for UK music site.", The Guardian, 29 October 2003, p21
] and subsequently incorporated into Yahoo!'s UK based music portal, UK
Launch. The main ''Dotmusic'' site shut down at the end of 2003. The regular forum posters created a number of replacement boards in an effort to retain the community.
References
External links
Archive of Dotmusic.co.uk- from the ''
Wayback Machine''.
Online music magazines published in the United Kingdom
BT Group
Yahoo! acquisitions
1995 establishments in the United Kingdom
2003 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
{{music-website-stub