Rock's Backpages Celebrates Fifth Birthday

Time to break out the cake and ice cream — or perhaps in this case, Cake, Vanilla Ice and Cream. The online rock journalism archive Rock's Backpages just celebrated its fifth birthday with a very special present: its 10,000th uploaded article.

The website provides an extensive archive of articles from well-known magazines to obscure zines, including Billboard, Creem, Melody Maker, Mojo, Radio and Records and Rolling Stone. Rock's Backpages co-founder Barney Hoskyns wrote in an e-mail to Paste that he created the site as a way of facilitating research for music journalism.

"I had the idea one day when someone asked me to recommend a writer for some Roy Harper liner notes," he wrote. "I thought, wouldn't it be handy to go online and find a bunch of Harper articles to get an idea of who'd write good liners. A nanosecond later I thought, wouldn't it be handy to be able to do that, period."

Hoskyns, a former editor for Mojo U.S., contacted an acquaintance, Mark Pringle, with the idea. Pringle expressed interest, and the two collaborated with mutual friend Martin Colyer, who handled site design and Tony Keys, who headed the business side of the project. And with that, Rock's Backpages was born.

Five years later, the site has expanded beyond simply providing articles, now offering recordings of interviews available on podcasts. Hoskyns wrote that he plans to continue expanding its media offerings, "from podcasts to book publishing to photography."

Although Rock's Backpages lacks a large subscription base, Hoskyns wrote that he believes in the site, and that the number of subscribers are steadily rising.

"Why do we stick to the subscription model?" he wrote. "Because in this greedy age of advertising and eyeballs, we believe that you should charge for a product you believe has value. Let others prostitute their wares for free. ... We think we're in a good position to turn RBP into a real hub of content provision."

For more information or to subscribe, visit rocksbackpages.com.