Home > Home - Featured

10/26/2019

OMN's 10th Anniversary: The goals we set back then

By TOM D'ANTONI // OMN went live on this date in 2009. Here's what I wrote about what we wanted it to be. Funny thing, a lot of it has come true.

I must have felt like Charles Foster Kane upon the first run of his newspaper. I had had some experience launching publications before. As I look at it now, ten years after John Nastos pushed the button and we went live, I find that yes, we were naive in some of our goals but we were also idealistic and we knew what we wanted OMN to be.

No, it didn't turn out exactly as we wanted, but neither did the music industry nor the world.

What's interesting to me is what we have accomplished and what goals we have met. I think all (well most) of the folks who have been involved in making OMN these ten years can be proud of what we've done, certainly enough to keep on doing it..

Having said that, here's what went up on October 26, 2009. --- Tom D'Antoni

- - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I am Editor-In-Chief of this thing. I want you to know is what this is and why we're doing it. The second thing I want you to know is that even though we're entering this world with pretty amazing talents onboard, we're not yet what we're going to be.

We will be adding new features and more information weekly. There's an internet axiom that says, if people don't find exactly what you want the first time they visit, they won't come back. We think you're smarter than that. We think you understand that we're growing and we although we know you may not be as excited about our growth as we are, we want you to bookmark us and come back often.

WHAT WE ARE

Oregon Music News exists because there is no longer one source for news and information about music in Oregon. When our sources of information moved to the internet they fractured in to small pieces. You can find out about one type of music here and another there. Each has value, but to our way of thinking everyone likes more than one type of music.

Why not have a source on the web where you can find it all, including what's new, who's playing and where, plus profiles of your favorite musicians and those who may end up as your favorites? Wouldn't you like to have all this presented in an easy to use site packed from one end to the other with everything you'd ever want to know about music in Oregon?

That's our aim...to be your music source. We've gathered the best writers we could find in just about every genre you can think of. Some of us have been around a long time, some of us are just starting out, and some are writing in their prime. But all of us love the music.

Our inspiration for making an all-genre resource is Music Millennium and Terry Currier. The store is one of the last places in the state where you can walk in and buy a recording of any genre of music. We've partnered with him in spirit and we're very happy to live on his home page, as well as our own.

Terry's reputation for honesty and good will and support for Oregon music and musicians is legendary. We hope we can live up to it. In that spirit, we pledge that we will never be a pay-for-play magazine. If you see an ad for a venue or a band, you have my personal pledge and that of all of us...our advertisers (although we love them) will never influence the journalism you will find on the site.

We hope you'll enjoy our social networking functions, our original videos and our webradio show. We want you to be a part of what we're doing.

You won't find your music excluded because of your age, or any other demographic factor. No matter what you like, we want you to be able to find out it about here. Yeah, it's a major challenge to provide that, and we will not debut fully-formed, but we're up to it. We're not a music industry publication...yes, I said "publication," just because we're online doesn't mean we're not. We're journalists, but we're music consumers, like you.

As James Brown used to like to say, "Kick off on the one and let the boogie do the rest."

Comments