About Room Thirteen
Room Thirteen launched on Monday October 20 2003.
The site was created to fill a niche in the online music magazine sector. When Room Thirteen was originally starting, a simple goal was set - to achieve the best alternative online music magazine. We realized that, at the time, online music magazines often lacked in content due to insufficient updates or simply because they were online-counterparts to printed material that received editorial priority.
Since October 2003, our readership has steadily increased and month-by-month our figures continue to grow. During summer 2007 we saw monthly unique visitor numbers pass the 220,000 mark.
Room Thirteen had it's first major design change in July 2004, this included adapting certain aspects of the way the site worked following feedback from the expanding reader base.
It wasn't just the reader numbers which were going up. By mid-2004 the amount of contributors at Room Thirteen had increased and our name had gained some weight in the industry. We were working with most major record labels and were even listed as one of four associate websites of Download Scotland,which allowed us to run our first big competition, giving away a pair of two-day tickets and a crate of booze.
As well as Downloadthat first summer of festival coverage included Leeds, Reading, V Festival Staffordshire and the Isle of Wight.
As 2004 came to a close, Room Thirteen had been involved in sponsoring a number of music events and festivals across the country - helping to boost our profile. Most notable was Bloodstock where the likes of Children of Bodom, Intense and Panic Cell appeared. Here we set a new bar for festival coverage, reviewing every set individually as well as providing daily overviews. With most of the line-up interviewed and photographed the coverage (online in under 2 days) was unrivalled.
The sponsorship options of Room Thirteen continued in to 2005, as we supported Tin Pan Alley, Bloodstock, Bloodstock Open Air and Black Winters Day - together providing our name to well over 20,000 people.
As well as interviews at festivals, Room Thirteen writers were talking to many of the acts getting music fans excitable. One in particular in early 2005, would go on to be one of our most viewed features for months to come. My Chemical Romance were definitely making a name for themselves, but 'Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge' was far from the worldwide chart-topping smash of recent LP 'The Black Parade'. Due to a lot of self promotion on the part of the writer in question, this interview brought Room Thirteen to the attention of hundreds of new readers.
The start of 2005 saw our staff-base continue to grow - adding additional members to the editorial team and the press / public relations section of our magazine. These, combined with new writers and photographers, helped to increase the number of reviews, interviews and news articles that appeared on the site. To help readers get these better we launched RSS news feeds for all sections of our site.
One of the biggest developments of 2005 was the first Room Thirteen promoted festival. We arranged the Thirteenth Day festival at Birmingham Academy which featured a selection of bands from around Europe (including Sonata Arctica, Epica, Finntroll and Norther) and drew a crowd from afar afield as Brazil.
We raised the number of festivals covered that summer, with highlights including the first time we ran our hugely popular dedicated Download Site. We also saw staff attend Reading and Leeds, V, Guilfest, Bloodstock and even Live 8 as well as open air shows for U2 and REM.
During 2006 Room Thirteen continued to grow - adding more readers every month. It soon became obvious that the amount of visitors to the site far outstripped anything originally imagined and work began on a new and updated website, whilst additional staff were recruited to cope with the significant increase in reviews that were being done. Our CD review section had grown to the point where most major, alternative and rock releases were covered, which led to our first album of the year review in 2005, something we repeated in 2006 and are preparing to do once again.
Additions to our list of covered events in 2006 included Camden Crawl, In The City, Bangkok 100 and Spain's Summercase.
In 2007 for the first time, Room Thirteen sponsored ProgPower UK whilst the site's readership continued to boom.
We also went to Bestival, Hellfest, Benicassim and even the Edinburgh Fringe on top of the usual suspects of Download, Leeds and Bloodstock.
In another first for the site, writer Andy Latham spent a week on tour with Brighton punk rock outfit McQueen as they toured Germany meaning we could add another name to the countries visited list, which now includes Holland, Austria, Spain, USA and Thailand amongst others.
Closer to home our live reviews section has grown to a point where we're now reviewing over 500 gigs and festival sets per year. With staff based in all corners of the country we're just as likely to be at a gig in Glasgow or Newcastle as we are Manchester, Cardiff, Southampton or London.
2007 also saw the launch of our MySpace site, with the same attitude that was adopted when R13 was born in 2003, i.e, many MySpace sites for other music magazines and websites didn't seem to be updated as regularly as they could be. We decided a major use of ours would be to showcase the best undiscovered talent on the net via our 'Band of the Week' feature.
To celebrate the site's fourth birthday in October 2007 Room Thirteen sponsored the best rock band award at the AAA music awards in London, the event itself co-insided with the four year anniversary of the site's launch. This is also when the new version of Room Thirteen was introduced, initially design first, with new features being introduced month-by-month.
The Future?
There is much planned for the site in the coming months, so if you feel you've something to offer then we want to hear from you. We're always looking to increase our staff list so have a look at the jobs page, then give us a shout!