The Beginning
In 1992, the Internet was a very different place. Only a few people outside of universities and research labs had access and there really wasn't much of the web beyond its birthplace at CERN labs in Switzerland. Even so, e-mail was thriving and driven by the fundamental human need to connect to others, groups of people were coming together on e-mail lists and on Usenet.
Meanwhile in the real world, rave culture was by now well established, spreading across the globe and onto Usenet with its own newsgroup, alt.rave. As raving began to take off in the States and people started to put on their own events, a series of regional mailing lists sprouted up. There was sf-raves in San Francisco, dc-raves in Washington, helping the culture along with news of events, music reviews and just generally acting as a place to meet like-minded souls. People from the UK on alt.rave began to think that the UK should have something like this too. I happened to have the ability to run a mailing list and so on 15 November 1992, UK-Rave was born.
The mailing list grew amazingly fast, reaching several hundred subscribers within just a few months. Running on a server in my bedroom and connected to the net every few hours via a 14.4K modem it also began to rack up some fairly impressive phone bills too. UK-Dance did take time to find its feet its feet in the early weeks, but as the New Year started, it began to come together and develop its own personality. One change also helped. Following a vote by its members, at the end of January 1993 UK-Rave became UK-Dance, broadening its scope to cover the whole dance scene.
Onto the web
The next major stage in UK-Dance's life came with its first web site, launched on 16 March 1994, the first music web site in the UK. This carried pointers to the mailing list along with reviews of music and events taken from the list. At the time the web was so new that it was necessary to explain to subscribers just what it was and what tools they could use to access it.
As the Internet really began to take off, it kickstarted started the biggest expansion in UK-Dance's members. Over the next year it reached over two thousand subscribers and with a greater percentage now coming from the UK, rather than the more international membership it had before.
The large growth brought with it some problems. Discussions could become very heated far more quickly and the amount of general noise crept up. It was also becoming unmanageable via a conventional phone line. Thankfully through my position doing consulting at a web agency I was able to finally get UK-Dance onto the Internet proper. This also meant the web site could at last carry messages directly from the list itself.
Offline
UK-Dance was not only bringing people together online, but increasingly in real life too. People had for some time been arranging meet-ups at the most popular raves, club nights and other events. With a strong showing of DJs and musicians on the list, the next stage was for members to organise events themselves.
The first was Cybiza, put together by Andrew Freeman and held at the 414 Club in Brixton in December 1994. Next up were a series of Triology events, beginning in May 1997. Kult, Flame Kru and Raya, three groups with a presence on UK-Dance, came together in a three room venue, reflecting the increasingly diverse range of dance music tastes. Up next will be a party to celebrate UK-Dance's ten years online.
UK-Dance also served as a place for DJs to swap mixes, first on tape, then later on CD and on the net itself as digital audio technology took hold. Musicians weren't left out either. There was one early attempt at a UK-Dance CD but sadly this didn't make it into production. It succeeded the second time, in the summer of 2002, with a double CD of music compiled by Boomclick's Rui Teimao.
Real time
With the increasing pressures of work, UK-Dance became somewhat distanced from my life for a while, left running pretty much on autopilot. During that time the web had sky rocketed, while UK-Dance was still really just an e-mail mailing list. Subscriber numbers had started dropping off while users on the Internet now expected everything to have a proper web presence. With that in mind and with work finally offering a bit more space, I decided it was time to get UKD onto the web properly.
In May 2000 a brand new web site was launched, with messages appearing as they were submitted, rather than as a twice-daily e-mail digest. Although a considerable change to UK-Dance's culture it has helped retain interest and thankfully worked out for the better. Since then the site has continued to grow, adding user profiles, a feed of stories from the dance music news sites and more besides.
Taking stock
Obviously when I first started UK-Dance, I never expected it to still be going after all this time. I'm very glad it is though. It's brought together a whole host of people who might never have met, some of whom have even married each other. It's allowed people to share their ideas, opinions and creative endeavours. These days we're all somewhat older and the community now reflects this, but UK-Dance remains as vibrant as ever. While the e-mail subscribers may have dropped it's serving up more pages on the web than ever before.
Over the next year I hope to do more to take UK-Dance further as a community, offering more tools to help its members make the most of it and allowing them to better share their knowledge and creations. We're only really at the beginning of what the Internet can do and there's still a long life I'm sure for UK-Dance.
A special thank you has to go out to everyone who has contributed to UK-Dance over the past ten years. I know it's a cliche, but it really wouldn't have got where it is today without you all. Here's to the next ten years.
Stephen Hebditch.
UK-Dance founder / admin.
Exciting UKD facts
- First dance music community on the net in Europe.
- First music web site in the UK.
- Total number of messages in the first ten years: 126,309.
- Total number of web pages served: over 10.7 million.
- Biggest month ever on the web in the first ten years: October 2002.
- Average number of readers each week: 2,200.
- Number of marriages through UK-Dance: 4.
