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AAJ's Year in Review 2005

By AAJ Staff
December 14, 2005
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It's that time of year again, when we look back upon all that we've heard, take stock of all that we've done, and make plans for the New Year ahead. Please read on...

Free Daily Download Update
A Word From Our Sponsors...
This Year's Developments
Visual Arts Center Update
The Year Ahead...
Most Read Articles & CD Reviews

Free Daily Download Update

How time flies—AAJ has been providing a free daily download for nearly two months! We're committed to offering an eclectic mix of tunes spanning all genres of jazz, and the feedback about this new free offering has been fantastic. As with most new ventures, the AAJ Download Center started slowly, but it's picking up steam quickly. We created a Top 50 Downloads of all time page, and the top five are all closing in on 1,000 downloads each. We also expanded our archive so that downloads are now available for to ten days.

If you are or represent a jazz musician or a record label and would like to feature your music at All About Jazz, click here for more information about our download program.

A Word From Our Sponsors...

AAJ is proud to showcase these exciting new releases at our Showcase Center.

Min Rager Quintet's Bright Road, David Tughan's Builders Brew, Caterina Valente's Caterina Valente Live 1968 CD & DVD, San Gabriel Seven's Chop Check, Michael Musillami Trio's Dachau, John La Barbera Big Band's Fantazm, Robert Sabin's Killdozer, Jane Ira Bloom's Like Silver, Like Song, Charlie Peacock's Love Press Ex-Curio, Steve Calafati's Mediterra, Stan Kenton & LA & NY Neophonic Orchestras's New Horizons, Vol 1 & 2, Mickey Tucker's Now and Then, Ron Kaplan's Saloon, Fredrick Levore's Skindiver, Chris Abelen's SPACE, and Kayle Brecher's Spy Music.

We invite you to show your support for AAJ by clicking through to these artists' websites and listening to music from their latest releases.

Are you or do you represent a jazz musician or record label? Click here for more information about promoting your new CD at AAJ.

This Year's Developments

2005 was an amazing year for All About Jazz, including winning our fourth consecutive Best Website Concentrating on Jazz award as voted by the Jazz Journalists Association. But 2005 was also a very busy year behind the scenes at AAJ. Here are just a few of those important accomplishments, too:

Launched the Visual Arts Center (currently featuring 138 photo albums and 8,000+ images), the Download Center, the Poster Store, the Video Center and the Podcast Center
Ran a successful fund drive for essential website security software and other equipment
Ran a succesful fund drive to help victims of Katrina, including one of AAJ's own
Upgraded our Bulletin Board technology, our server hardware (twice), the Upcoming Releases Center, the News Center and the Showcase service
Redesigned the site
Set an all-time best for most CD reviews published in a month (331, back in August) and for most visitors in a month (800,552 in October)
Incorporated Extended Analysis & Multiple CD Review articles within the CD Review Center
Created public Top 50 pages for most-read CD reviews, articles and news items. We also created "all time" most-read reports.
Established mechanism to schedule articles and CD reviews well in advance and to be automatically activated at the start of a new day
Added a jazz blog directory

Visual Arts Center Update

The AAJ Visual Arts Center now showcases over 8,000 jazz photos, paintings, and illustrations. With new images added daily, AAJ has quickly become the go-to source for jazz imagery on the web.

Recent additions include photo albums by John Abbott, Jose Manuel Horna and William Brown. We're also featuring a special series of New Orleans photos by Scott Chernis, as well as assorted photographs by Bill King, Juan-Carlos Hernández, Jos L. Knaepen, and the graphic art of Kenneth L Walker.

"Hank & Elvin" by John Abbott

The Year Ahead...

If you thought that 2005 was full of impressive accomplishments, wait till you see what we accomplish in 2006. "MY AAJ" will soon become the centerpiece of the site; development is planned to begin in January, 2006. Once "MY AAJ" is established, our focus will shift to a new Regional Calendar of Events. These two long anticipated systems will touch every aspect of AAJ. And once they're in place, we can finally say we finished the first phase of AAJ development. It only took ten years!

We expect to have a version 1.0 of each system in place sometime this summer.

New Most Read Articles & CD Reviews

Our most read new articles this month...

And the most read CD reviews...

Joel Harrison - Harrison on Harrison
Pieranunzi / Johnson / Baron - Play Morricone
Andrew Hill - Andrew!!!
The Crimson Jazz Trio - The King Crimson Songbook
Tomasz Stanko - Wolnosc w Sierpniu
Yusef Lateef - Psychicemotus
Kiril - Balcancan Soundtrack
Edmond Hall - Petite Fleur
Sonny Rollins - The Essential Sonny Rollins
Gerald Wilson - The Artist Selects

View the Top 50 most read CD reviews and articles in the last 30 days.

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