About
I’m With The Band is a Newcastle based website which aims to promote the music scenes of Newcastle and the Central Coast, here’s the story of how we made it to where we are today and some of our future plans.
I’m With The Band was first conceived in November 2006 after our editor, Mathew Packer, attended the Street Press, and Publicity and Promotion, lectures at the Newcastle Music Week Expo. At the time Matt was photographing bands for Faster Louder but began to grow disheartened by the lack of coverage for Newcastle based musicians so he decided to go it alone and start I’m With The Band.
For the next 2-3 months Matt worked pretty hard on not only building the website but also hiring writers and photographers to help out with the project, he also contacted many different record companies and promoters across Australia in an effort to get I’m With The Band on their mailing lists for press releases, cd releases, and anything else he could get his hands on that would be useful to grow the readership of IWTB.
Those first couple of months were pretty lean hit wise for the website, I think we were only averaging 10-20 per day, but Matt never gave up on the idea that the website could be something big and today we’re averaging over 50,000 hits per month all signs point to that hitting 80,000 by the middle of 2008.
Some of the highlights for 2007 were our coverage of Groovin The Moo which landed us about 20,000 hits per week following the festival, we were amongst the contingent of press invited to the Red Carpet event of the ARIA Awards, we also had reviewers and photographers at shows like the John Butler Trio, The Waifs, The Veronicas, and Missy Higgins amongst many others. All in all it was a big year with too many highlights to mention here.
At the beginning of 2008 Matt sat down with Kevin Bull from Reverb Street Press to try and form an alliance that could benefit both I’m With The Band and Reverb Street Press. After many meetings and probably a bit of frustration from both sides Matt and Kevin agreed that in the best interest of the Newcastle and Central Coast scenes they would join forces in an effort to further promote the scene. So far this alliance has meant that I’m With The Band has been able to increase it’s article output way beyond it’s previous capabilities while Reverb Street Press has been given an even larger readership base by being able to provide each month’s issue via a download link on the IWTB website, it’s a win-win situation for both parties, and surely to be a hit with the readers of both medias.
2008 looks like it will continue be a big year here at I’m With The Band. Recently we moved over to a new website, and with that we were fortunate enough to be able to purchase the www.imwiththeband.com domain name, and are now able to offer a much simpler interface to our readers as well as being able to incorporate video content via You Tube. We’re also expanding the websites potential by selling off advertising, with the funds from these sales to be used to sponsor band nights at various venues in Newcastle, as well as allowing us to get involved with the major band competitions held each year in Newcastle as a sponsor. We’ve also got a new online shop in the works where we will help bands in Newcastle and the Central Coast sell their CDs and other merch online which we feel will greatly benefit the bands as at this point in time many of them are only able to sell these things at their gigs.
Over the last couple of years there have been numerous other music websites popup that have claimed to be the best in Newcastle and the most original and blah blah blah, the fact of the matter is that I’m With The Band is the only one still around now and at no point in the future are we likely to go away.
We love music, and we love this region, now we figure it’s time for the rest of Australia and the world to take some notice.