• media
• information
• opinion

The media includes:

• audio downloads
• photo gallery
• radio programming

The information includes:

• artist directory
• interviews
• articles
• reviews of cds, concerts, videos, books
• label spotlights
• festival schedules
• news
• calendar of events
• classifieds
• links

The opinions include:

• reviews of cds, concerts, videos
• "best of" lists
• recommendations of outstanding new releases
• "Talkin' Jazz," a bulletin board of discussion topics

Coverage

We try to cover as many styles of Jazz as can be identified, including: modern, avant garde, blues, big band, contemporary, fringes, fusion, funk/groove, dixieland, and latin/afro-cuban.

Approach

We try to approach this huge variety of material so that:

• AAJ can be used by the Jazz newbie as a source of ideas for starting points. This includes identifying accessible material & landmark works, as well as presenting artists who approach Jazz using ideas and material from classical, folk, rock, blues, and dance music.
• AAJ can be a useful reference for Jazz enthusiasts. This means approaching the leading artists in various genres, identifying important new releases, providing relevant historical information, and making information available about live performances.
• AAJ can also serve as a resource for readers with more specialized interests. So we cover emerging & offbeat artists, indie labels, and important players from less well-documented continua--from dixieland to the avant garde.

Goals

Our goal is to make this material as accessible as possible. This means facilitating easy navigation of the site by organizing the material in an intuitive fashion and allowing easy exploration of inter-related topics.

We also strive to be as objective as possible in presenting the material. This includes providing contributions from many different points of view. We publish material from over 100 different regular contributors: this depth of field allows us to cover the complete spectrum of Jazz from a wide variety of viewpoints.

We try to foster the development of an Internet Jazz community by facilitating discussion topics, providing mechanisms for reader feedback (eg. reader polls and reader reviews), building an email newsletter mailing list, soliciting independent contributions, and covering Jazz on a global scale (including North America, Europe, Australia, and Latin America).

Other means we utilize to further the awareness of Jazz and to build our readership are to continually develop new content areas, leverage new technology (audio, video, automation), ensure optimal search engine indexing, and form strategic partnerships with the following Internet organizations:

Must See Music
Jazz Steps
Schwann Inside Magazine
GMN.com (Jazz Webcasts)
AllJazzTV.com (Video of the Week)
Discover Music (Audio Review of the Day)

Finally, we constantly strive to help Jazz artists reach a wider audience over the Internet.