On March 24th 2018 we announced the launch of Syncopatedtimes.com on our Facebook page. At the time we only had 300 followers. A total of nine people visited the website on day one. In no universe was I qualified for the project I'd taken on, I'd never had a blog let alone built a website!
By that August the training wheels had come off, the paywall went up and we posted all of the content from the August 2018 print issue online. In September we ran a notice in the print paper alerting subscribers. By October we had gotten to traffic numbers that would support online advertising. We started to attract a trickle of online subscribers from around the world. Many others were amazed to discover that the music they cared about had its own paper and signed up to receive us in print.
Two years later I like to think the website looks as professional as those of the fully staffed mainstream jazz magazines. Our online presence has helped us find many new writers, over 100 now, and to pay the ones who really need the money. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say we've become the best resource for traditional jazz and ragtime news in the world. I won't claim the same for coverage of the dance focused swing scene but we are making progress!
We now have around twenty thousand
