We have survived another year. And when you get right down to it, sheer survival is the reason any of us celebrate birthdays. We are seven years old today — we made our first post on November 21, 2009.
As I wrote at the time of our last birthday (and it remains true), seven years isn’t very long when compared to the lifespan of your average Galápagos tortoise, but measured by the lifespan of your average metal blog, we’re almost ready for a nursing home.
I continue to be amazed and thankful that we’re still here, that so many good friends are still devoting themselves to writing for NCS on a purely volunteer basis, and that so many readers haven’t yet gotten fed up and purged us from their lives.
As we celebrate hanging on for another year, I want to give special thanks to two friends who have been here the longest and most consistently in sharing this strange obsession with me:
Andy Synn’s first post was a review of Dimmu Borgir’s Abrahadabra on September 23, 2010. And DGR’s first post was a series of year-end lists on December 28, 2011. They are good dudes, and their fortitude is to be admired for manning the ramparts of our rough-hewn and ramshackle fortress for so many years.
Another old-timer, TheMadIsraeli, has recenty surfaced again after a long break, and as I look back over the last year thanks are also in order for the contributions of many other fine folks — among them Austin Weber, Comrade Aleks, Gorger, Wil Cifer, Grant Skelton, Todd Manning, Craig Hayes, Kaptain Carbon, KevinP, Karina Cifuentes, and Evita Hofmane. (I feel sure I’m forgetting some people, and I blame my hangover for the oversight.)
Of course, we are also grateful to those of you who visit NCS and to all the metal bands and visual artists whose creativity is the reason for our existence
And now for the annual round-up of boring statistics. Since we launched NCS seven years ago, we’ve published 7,935 posts, including this one — and 1,283 of them appeared in the 12 months since our last birthday. We’ve continued to post something on almost every day including weekends and holidays, with just a few misses.
At this writing, we’ve received 66,634 comments since the beginning, exclusive of spam, and I’m guessing that now only a small fraction of those are mine.
According to Google Analytics, we’ve had 481,246 unique visitors over the last year from all over the world, and since this time last year we’ve had 1,932,534 page views, which is 148,400 more than we had the year before.
As another measure of our support, the “likes” for our Facebook page have grown from 17,108 at this time last year to 26,022 as I write this today. This leaves us only 201,838 likes behind the FB page for Cheese Whiz, which is really inspirational.
In keeping with data from past years, over the last 12 months less than half the visits to our U.S.-based site (41.43%) have come from people in the U.S. 6.55% have come from the UK and 5.75% from Canada, and the balance have come from more than 100 other countries around the world, with Germany, Australia, Poland, France, Italy, Sweden, and The Netherlands rounding out the top 10, in that order.
To once again paraphrase Blade Runner, I don’t know how long we’ll have together… Who does? I hope we’ll still be here at this time next year and I hope you’ll still be here with us.
– Islander
31 Responses to “HAPPY SEVENTH BIRTHDAY TO US”
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Keep up the good work. Day in and day out, the hardest-working, most useful, and all around positive and cheerful source of new music that I know.
Seconded!
Happy birthday No Clean Siging, here we are again, this is my sixth year as a reader and listener, I’m glad to see that your site is alive and well, I’m waiting for reviews and final lists and the list of the most infectious metal songs, keep it up, your dedication and accuracy is very respectable, thanks to find some of your time for us, I’ve found great bands here and I can’t wait to read and listen what you have in store for us for the upcoming new year, bye!
Thanks so much to your and your contributors for your hard work! I’m a creature of habit and visit less than a dozen websites of any kind on a regular basis. Over the past year and change, NCS has become one of them. I’m looking forward to many more dark, horrid and repulsive musical discoveries!
Happy birthday, folks.
You do an outstanding job on a daily basis, so thank you all for that.
Now get back to work!
Greetings from Tristram!!! Brethren. Ive been following the site for roughly 5 years on it and 4th year commenting crap on this site. Hah! Blessings eternal to Islander and his unholy horde!
EDIT (accidentally revealed my true identity) gah! old age!
Greetings from Tristram!!! Brethren. Ive been following the site for roughly 5 years on it and 4th year commenting crap on this site. Hah! Blessings eternal to Islander and his unholy horde!
ah that’s better.
Wish you the best! You’re doing an amazing job!
I cant believe this poser site is still around
After reading daily for almost four years, I can still thank you for always providing me with great music, great stories and a great excuse for spending way too much money on new albums. Cheers!
Congrats, NCS. I’m not much of a commenter but this is one of the few metal blogs I read, and I appreciate you guys bringing us so much great music almost every day. Long may it continue!
The first time I stumbled upon your site was 2014. At that time I wasn’t really what you would call a regular visitor and even in 2015 I have been around for unregular visits, never commented on anything, just looked through all those Shades of Black Metal posts in hope to find me some more bizarre sounding Black Metal bands. This year I am a bit more active and revisit your site more often and I probably won’t disappear so fast, because I like this site, especially for their listmania, their black metal articles and their obscure / dissonant music recommendations, not every band is for me but I haven’t found a site who could recommend better unknown bands than you do. So happy birthday and thank you for being there.
The best there is, keep it up lads.
Congrats, keep at it. My fave music site, and I’ve probably discovered more good stuff here than, well, wherever else I used to discover from. As a gift, I give you web traffic.
Happy birthday! Thanks for another year of NCS!
Hail NCS!
Happy Birthday NCS! Have I really been around here for four years? Yeesh. Hopefully in the next year I’ll be able to be a bit more active, once I dive back into the maelstrom America created for itself while I was away.
Happy Birthday NCS!
I’ve been a daily reader for 4 years (more or less) and I thank you for almost daily discoveries of really good music!
Earlier this year I was in a hospital for 4 months after a car crash and the music I found here cheered me up a little bit 🙂
Keep up the good work & I hope this blog will continue for a long time!
Oh, bloody ‘ell, I forgot to bring a present.
Oh well, here’s a song, pluss a short video to put that birthday-smile underneat that silly birthday-hat.
Here’s to another vigorous year!
Happy Birthday to one of my favorite sites!!! Thank you for writing thoughtful pieces and holding a standard of quality consistently throughout the site.
Thank you for all your support!
xoxoxo
Happy Birthday NCS, thankyou for all your hard work and dedication,here’s to another 7.
Happy Birhday! 🙂
(Bladerunner, whoohoo!)
I discovered this site just 2 years ago (prior to that I did not look at the internet much) and it is one of my favorites and one I go to often. This site has made me aware of LOTS of awesome new and old metal. Love it. Thanks.
NCS introduced me to countless bands and here i found an exceptional space to discuss music in the most respectful and objective of ways.
congrats! thanks for all your support.
nksv.
Congratulations! Besides being one of my favorite metal sites, No Clean Singing is also an underground music phenomenon – a premier music resource that runs exclusively on the enthusiasm and genuine interest of music lovers. Seeing it only get stronger each year is very satisfying!
Happy Birthday to my favorite Metal Fanatics!!!
A bit late to the party (literally?) but yeah, hails & whatnot. Seriously though keep it up, always find tons of good shit here almost every single day. Thank you!
Happy Birthday, NCS!
This blog has made me discover so many great bands over the past years. I hope that this continues for many years to come. I raise my glass of whisky in your honor. Cheers!
I’ve been remiss in failing to thank everyone for their birthday greetings, but I’ve read every one and appreciate the time everyone took to let us know that we mean something to you. It fuels the fires around here.