Having a conversation with Kris (who runs MFR’s MySpace) the other day, she asked how traffic at Mr. Furious Records was coming along.
The way downloads are tracked has changed, since we moved the music over to archive.org. The Internet Archive tracks downloads somehow, but the details aren’t published. For example, today it says that Sally Ride has been heard 22 times; if a user listens to one song, is that counted? Does “hearing” take the whole album being streamed/downloaded to count? Who knows. We used to measure bandwidth transmitted from audio files and get an idea of direct downloads from that, but that method doesn’t work any longer.
The best snapshot I can find comes from our “unique visitors” each month. Meaning (I assume) unique IP addresses; if Kris visits mrfuriousrecords.com six times, that counts as “1” under unique visitor. Here’s 2005:
Jan – 89
Feb – 101 (Beach-Puppy, Creepy Eepy)
March – 232
April – 346
May – 347 (GiLMO, Points of Parallax)
June – 267
July – 266
August – 305 (D-Rockets, Matt Wisecarver’s Secret Fantasy)
September – 340 (MFR, Nebraska Verses)
October – 395 (Bike, Stroke Me Gently, Lady Luck)
At MFR, we don’t succeed or feel validated based on these numbers. I don’t know how you will feel about them, but personally I think it’s fantastic that almost 400 people visited our site last month.
Sidenote; our fall release schedule just sort of jumped out at me. Add Sally Ride (Oct. 30 – basically November) and we’ve had albums out four months in a row, with the XMAS compilation set for Dec. 1!!!111. Rad. With an echoes EP, a debut from Benjamin Axeface, and another EP (Ventura) that I’m doing with Cory coming up… Bike’s hard at work on The Last Desperate Act…
-h