I know there hasn’t been a lot of content posted on here over the course of the past two years. There are a number of reasons why, not the least of which has been my involvement with music production since the beginning of 2015. But even that aside, it took me some serious thinking to come to the conclusion that this blog has run its course in recent times.

When I launched Beantown Boogiedown back in 2009 it was just a ‘fun music project’ designed to take my mind off how bad the recession was at the time. I figured I’d do it for a couple of months then run out of content to write about and move on to something else. Little did I realize how it became the foundation to almost all of the friends I’ve made in Boston’s music scene since then. I love writing about music and helping promote my friend’s artwork, and the fact hundreds of people came by this place every day to read about it was the icing on the cake.

Unfortunately, there have been some issues in recent years that needed to be addressed. The biggest ones included the following:

1. I’ve been running BBD on an obsolete, ten-year-old version of Squarespace, which is not even remotely optimized for Web 2.0. Because this blog has so much content (literally thousands of posts and gigs of photo galleries), upgrading to a more recent version (let alone WordPress) was pretty much impossible. And staying on the old version eliminated any chance of building a responsive, mobile-friendly design. Google penalized me harshly for this by dropping my page rank, causing me to lose over 90% of my traffic almost overnight in 2014 (from over 1,000 visitors per day to less than 100). Social media integration on the old version of Squarespace was also pretty much non-existent. And if your content isn’t being shared across social, you’re irrelevant to Google.
2. Because the version of Squarespace I’m on is no longer officially supported, it’s also not secure. I learned this the hard way this past summer when the blog got hit by malware, which I’ve completely given up on trying to diagnose or fix myself without breaking the bank. The risk of infecting my computer has been the #1 reason why zero content has been posted here in months.
3. I launched my label, Zakim Recordings, back in 2013. The problem is, I’d spend most of my time promoting BBD instead of building a music community around Zakim and the artists involved with it, which would make much more sense. Single-branding is totally the move, especially in my limited amount of free time.
4. While I never plan to stop promoting artists who live in Boston, the name ‘Beantown Boogiedown’ severely limited the scope to just within the city, opening up very few opportunities from outside. I want good music to be the scope of the blog I run, not necessarily location. And as slow as I’ve been to admit it, let’s be honest here… using the word ‘Beantown’ really didn’t do me any favors either, especially as a transplant to this city. LMAO

So what’s the solution? I’ve decided to shift my efforts over Zakimrecordings.com, which is officially up and running. What I plan to do there is not unlike BBD. Lots of writeups on dance/electronic music I’m digging, with a slight emphasis on local artists. A brand new DJ mix podcast series. Archives of photos. Ticket giveaway contests. And of course, the core of Zakim, the label itself…which is not only going to include vinyl releases but also digital and a promo channel. Due to limited time, the writing style will mostly be short-form, but aside from that, it will be very similar to what I did on here.

Basically, I just wanted to streamline things, and the best way to overcome the technical limitations is to wipe the slate clean. I encourage you to check out the site and hit it with Facebook or Twitter followers to stay on top of what’s going on.
Some housekeeping:

1. All the BBD podcast mixes are archive and will stay online indefinitely. They can be streamed on my Mixcloud page.
2. BBD will also stay online, at least for the next several years. I plan to slowly copy the majority of my photo archive over to the Zakim page, however for easier sharing.
3. The BBD YouTube page will eventually be rebranded to Zakim and will become a promo channel for various releases on the label.
4. The BBD Soundcloud and Facebook pages will stay put. Since both have decent followings, I may leverage them at times to announce important releases or projects on Zakim.

In closing, I would like to thank everyone who has read or supported Beantown Boogiedown over the past 8 years. It is the biggest project I have ever built, and I hope to keep that spirit alive in 2017 on the new blog. Once again, this site will stay put, so all content I’ve produced here will continue to be available at least for the next few years. But either way, I appreciate you all. Over and onwards, and happy 2017!

www.zakimrecordings.com

Peace,
Nick