About This Project

The Newcastle Music Directory was a unique resource for the local music community. This site aimed to showcase the music of Newcastle and provide a comprehensive index of websites that focused on the musical diversity of the region.

The directory was an attempt to bring regionality back to the internet, where huge websites threaten to homoginise the musical content, making the geographic origin of the music irrelevant.

The geographic area covered by this website is shown in orange on the map to the right. The area stretches roughly from the Hawkesbury river in the south to Taree in the North, and West to Merriwa in the upper Hunter Valley.

All of the musicians on this website were based in the area around Newcastle at some time between 1999 and 2011. The site was intended to be an archive of information for people looking for information about the music scene in this region.

The Newcastle Music Directory was compiled and maintained by Andrew Goodwin, who volunteered over 5000 hours of his time to maintaining the website and database. In 2005 Andrew was awarded with a Newcastle Community Volunteers Award for his work.

The website was continuously updated from 1999 to 2011, and remained online until mid 2021 when it was finally retired from the internet.

Although the website is no longer active, a full archive of the site can be found on The Internet Archive.

Some of the relevant parts of the archive include:

• The Gig Archive, containing details of over 80,000 local music events from 2006 to 2010,
• The News Archive, containing hundreds of articles about the local music scene from 2005 to 2011,
• A visualisation of local music activity from July to December 2009,
• A list of all entries in the Newcastle Music Awards from 2002 to 2009.

The Newcastle Music Directory aimed to provide the Newcastle region with:

• a musical identity of its own that bands and artists are proud to identify with
• a comprehensive list of current gigs and events
• links to locally based websites that relate to the music scene
• up-to-date and informative profiles for as many local bands and artists as possible
• maps and information about local pubs, clubs and musical venues
• an archive historical information about the local music scene for long term reference
• a unified voice to highlight the musical talent of the region to people from other areas

Timeline

The following is a brief timeline outlining the project's major milestones:

• November 1999 - Compilation of the database begins
• May 2000 - 100^th link added
• January 2001 - Database back end migrated from flat file to a MySQL relational database. Scripting language changed from Perl to PHP
• February 2001 - Current design and colour scheme established
• March 2001 - 500^th link added to database
• October 31^st 2001 - Launch of the TE Archive
• January 2002 - 1000^th link added to database
• August 2002 - 250^th Artist added
• February 2003 - Database structure updated to separate Links and Artists tables
• March 2003 - 2000^th link added to database
• June 6^th 2003 - Site moved to new server to accommodate space and bandwidth requirements
• June 2003 - 500^th artist added
• July 2003 - Artists database cross referenced with the articles in the TE Archive. Individual page provided for each artist. Number of links exceeds 3000
• August 2003 - Songs entered in the 2002 and 2003 Newcastle Music Awards are indexed and a link to each entry is provided from the entrants profile.
• September 22^nd 2003 - Publication of the schedule of events for Newcastle Music Week 2003
• September 2003 - 4000^th link added to database
• November 19^th 2003 - 1000^th Artist added
• August 2004 - Entries in the 2004 Newcastle Music Awards indexed; Number of artists exceeds 1200
• September 2004 - 5000^th link added
• September 8^th 2004 - Site news moved to automated publishing system.
• September 28^th 2004 - Site updates made available via RSS.
• July 2005 - Launch of NMBot, a web robot designed to improve indexing and maintenance of the links database.
• August 2005 - Number of artists exceeds 1500
• September 28^th 2005 - Site operator Andrew Goodwin receives a Newcastle Community Volunteers Award for his work on the site.
• October 2005 - 6000^th link added to database
• May 11^th 2006 - 7000^th link added; Number of artists exceeds 1700.
• September 11^th 2006 - Entries in Triple J's Unearthed Competition indexed.
• September 25^th 2006 - 8000^th link added; Number of artists exceeds 2000.
• September 26^th 2006 - Launch of the Gig Guide.
• October 12^th 2006 - Site moved to Australian based server; All content moved to www.newcastlemusic.com.
• October 16^th 2006 - News system restructured.
• November 23^rd 2006 - 9000^th link added; Number of artists exceeds 2500.
• December 2006 - Videos section launched.
• December 7^th 2006 - Site Search functionality upgraded; Sitemap added.
• January 2007 - Number of artists exceeds 2800.
• February 27^th 2007 - 5000^th gig listed in the Gig Guide.
• April 10^th 2007 - Number of artists exceeds 3000.
• May 11^th 2007 - Restructure of the link categories. New categories include Managers and Agents, Sound and Lighting, Promotion, Photography, Production and Tuition.
• May 24^th 2007 - Launch of the Venues section of the site.
• July 1^st 2007 - 10,000^th gig listed in the Gig Guide.
• August 2007 - Additional RSS feeds made available.
• September 6^th 2007 - 1000^th Video added to the site.
• February 4^th 2008 - 20,000^th gig listed in the Gig Guide.
• March 8^th 2008 - Workshop given at the Port Fairy Folk Festival about internet technologies. Slides from the presentation are available here
• April 5^th 2008 - Number of artists exceeds 3500.
• April 17^th 2008 - Launch of the 1233 ABC Newcastle Music Awards Archive.
• May 21^st 2008 - Gig Guide upgraded; Number of Venues exceeds 500.
• May 25^th 2008 - Launch of the Gig Archive.
• October 2008 - 30,000^th gig listed in the Gig Guide.
• October 27^th 2008 - 10,000^th MySpace Blog Post archived via RSS.
• November 2008 - Site enters it's 10^th year of continuous operation.
• March 2009 - 40,000^th gig listed in the Gig Guide.
• March 27^th 2009 - Number of artists exceeds 4000; number of venues exceeds 600.
• July 2009 - 50,000^th gig listed in the Gig Guide.
• September 2009 - Links to artists Twitter profiles indexed.
• October 21^st 2009 - Artist's tracks uploaded to ABC Contribute embedded in theor profile page.
• November 27^th 2009 - Presentation given at the 2009 Open Source Developers Conference in Brisbane.
• December 2009 - Newcastle Music Directory celebrates ten years of continuous operation.
• January 2010 - Facebook page set up at facebook.com/newcastlemusic.
• February 8^th 2010 - Introduction of site logo. Provides consistent branding across website, Facebook and Twitter @newcastlemusic
• May 2010 - Number of artists exceeds 4500; number of venues exceeds 700.
• June 6^th 2010 - Addition of the Twitter and MySpace feed indexing services.
• December 2019 - Celebrates twenty years of continuous operation.
• 25^th June 2021 - Site retired from internet