Thirty Years Later, the Vision Remains

When people ask me how All About Jazz began, they often assume it started with a website.

It didn't.

The idea predates AAJ by two years.

Before All About Jazz launched in August 1995, I was fascinated by the possibilities of organizing album information in ways that made it more useful, more connected and more enjoyable to explore. At the time, I was working on a CD-ROM project devoted to jazz discographies, inspired in part by Tom Lord's The Jazz Discography. My goal wasn't simply to digitize information. I wanted to transform it into something relational and interactive—a system where albums, tracks, personnel and other data could be connected and explored in new ways.

Around the same time, my business interests were pulling me in a different direction. A software project that I was developing with my partner Mike Lorenz received support from the Ben Franklin Technology Fund in Philadelphia. That project, DigiDay, brought the familiar page-a-day calendar concept to the desktop computer and eventually evolved into ScreenThemes.

For a young entrepreneur in the early days of the internet, software seemed like the logical path forward. I built websites for clients. I developed software. I explored business opportunities (like JobNet, a job recruitment website) that, in hindsight, may have led me down a very different road.

Yet jazz kept calling me back.

Even while working on commercial projects, I continued spending late nights thinking about a larger idea. At the time, most jazz websites were rooted in the print paradigm. The print publication websites (when they finally got around to building them) often mirrored their magazines. Valuable as they were, I found myself imagining something fundamentally different.

I wasn't interested in reproducing a magazine online.

I envisioned an interconnected ecosystem.

Albums connected to musicians. Musicians connected to articles. Articles connected to recordings. Readers connected to discovery. A living, growing resource where information could be searched, sorted, explored and continually expanded.

That vision eventually became All About Jazz.

Looking back, it's easy to focus on what the platform became. What interests me more is how much of the original vision remains unfinished.

Over the past thirty years, All About Jazz has grown beyond anything I could have imagined in 1995. Millions of readers have visited the site. Thousands of writers, photographers, musicians and industry professionals have contributed their time and talents. We've helped artists reach audiences, helped audiences discover artists and helped preserve a small but meaningful piece of jazz history along the way.

Yet I still find myself thinking about possibilities.

I think about new ways to connect artists with opportunities. New ways to help listeners discover music. New ways to preserve knowledge and make it accessible. New ways to strengthen the jazz ecosystem while remaining true to the principles that guided us from the beginning.

The technology has changed dramatically since 1995.

The mission has not.

If anything, it feels more relevant today than ever.

When I recently committed myself to another decade with All About Jazz, it wasn't because I believe the work simply needed refinement. It was because I believe the most important opportunities still lie ahead.

That's why we are developing our Sustainability & Growth initiative and All About Jazz Media. That's why we continue investing in new tools, new methodologies and new ways to serve the community. And that's why we're inviting readers to join us as we build the next chapter.

Thirty years later, the vision remains.

The only difference is that now we have thirty years of experience, a global community and a stronger foundation on which to build.

The first thirty years were about proving the idea.

The next thirty years are about realizing its full potential and that's exciting.