PlayErie.com figures from the past four months continue to show tremendous growth. The graph above and chart below show the total number of visits to our site, as well as the daily average visits.

To clarify, "visits" are unique visitors to site, so someone coming into the site and surfing through ten pages would be considered one visit. Alternatively, "hits" are every page and element that is loaded. So a single page may yield 20 hits for every image on the page. A lot of wesites use the exaggerated "hits" figure to make their numbers look better. However, "visits" is a much more realistic assessment. For example, in the month of January PlayErie.com had 695,962 hits, which looks big but doesn't mean much in real-world terms.

Here are some of our statistics in the form of visits:

	Monthly visits	Daily average visits
November	11,758	391
December	10,341	333
January	11,337	365
February	10,255	603

As you can see, with many days still to go in February we are going to reach an all-time high this month.

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John Johnston, best know as one of the founding members of Telefonics, is now managing our CD reviews section.

John will be doing some of the reviews himself, as well as recruiting and organizing a group of independent reviewers. If you are interested in doing reviews of local artists please contact John at reviews@playerie.com

If you are a local artist and have CDs or other materials that you would like to submit for review please send them to:

This was originally posted in June, 2003:

I have enjoyed the past two years living here in Erie, and it has been a fascinating experience discovering a music scene that was previously unknown to me. However, this is certainly not the end of my relationship with the Erie music community and the many friends that I have made since the beginnings of Play Erie ...quite the contrary.

PlayErie.com will continue as always, but it is also time to take it to the next level. Over the next few months we will see if it is ready. First, I intend to continue to administer the site... with a few changes. Naturally I won't be present for local show reviews. So, the first order of business is to find a few people that are able and willing to do this.

Coordinating show and CD reviews will now be handled by John Johnston, who is one of the most enthusiastic musicians that I have met during my time in Erie. John can be reached at reviews@playerie.com - if you would like to get involved please let him know.

The Upcoming Shows calendar will be maintained by Christine Volk, who has already been a tremendous help in that area. Please send your show dates and information to Christine at shows@playerie.com For those of you who don't know, Christine is the sole member of the Jocelyn Porter Project. JPP is intense, emotional and a prime example of what the Erie music scene is all about.

Public relations will continue to be handled by Gary Tomporowski. Gary is an old friend from my days of being a musician back in the mid-eighties. He is the percussionist in several local bands such as Starfish and the Midnight Riders. In my opinion Gary is the guy that adds the "smooth" factor to a project: no matter how crazy everything is around him he has that "chill-out, kick back and enjoy the ride" quality about him. If you need anything having to do with PR, sales or promotion of the Erie music scene please contact him at gary@playerie.com.

Design and technical issues will still be in the hands of the mysterious Rick DiBello, who I'd like to remind everyone is responsible for the entire look of the PlayErie site. Rick is currently immersed in database and server applications that will eventually be the engine that drives a national network of PlayErie-type websites.

And of course there are all of you, the local musicians, sound & lighting technicians, venue & studio owners and most importantly the listeners. Without listeners buying the local CDs and going out to local shows there would be no Erie music scene, and the pages of PlayErie.com would be blank. It is my hope that you will all continue to raise the awareness of the Erie music scene to the rest of the world.

I have heard that Erie is considered a "test market" for many things. Your local music community is an excellent prototype for other cities to follow. I have received many letters from all over the country (and even other countries) praising the PlayErie website and concept. In these messages I have seen a comment over and over: "I wish we had something like that in our city."

To this end the real test will be in establishing a "pipeline". PlayErie.com is the model for a national network of localized websites. It is the lone example of how each local site should work, or at least it was the lone example... allow me direct your attention to www.playnashville.com (Still very, very much under construction, just a transplant of PlayErie.com ...and will be for a while.)

Now there are two, and the next test will be how one site can work with another. This is the next step toward the national network. If we can't establish the pipeline between two sites, then there is not much point in building further. However, if the pipeline is successful... at that point the concept of PlayCities.net will have the potential to spread like a virus across the country. At this level we can begin to think about national sponsors such as Gibson, Fender, Coca-Cola and McDonald's - then things begin to get really interesting.

But back to the here and now: I'm going to Nashville to do the same thing that I did here: ask any major artists that I know for a quote on the home page, begin to build artist pages on the site with people that I already have connections with, etc. This should get the site off to a good start. Ah, but what of Erie you ask?

One goal will be to bring artists back and forth across the pipeline, at first this would be mostly in the direction of Erie artists playing in Nashville venues. After a period of time traffic should begin to flow in the opposite direction as well. The goal is to connect two cities via the pipeline, which will demonstrate the next step in the plan, the Network.

If it all works then the computer and internet will have cracked the last nut in the music industry. We have seen computer technology allow world-class recording to take place in the home, and soon mastering followed. The same thing occurred with desktop publishing and video production. But the thing that every artist still needs to reach any level of success is the major label's network of marketing, distribution and promotion. The PlayCities.net concept is a possible alternative to distribution and marketing that was previously beyond the reach of a local band.

Lofty goals? Yes, but it is possible... at least we can now find out how two cities connected by the network will endure. Even before that, we will find out if there are people motivated enough to keep their local network up and running: in this case PlayErie.com.

I'd like to thank all of the interesting and wonderful people that I have met during my time here, especially those of you who have become new-found friends (you know who you are). Let's keep pushing it forward...

All for now,
John Trevethan