mnemonic.nizhny.ru was a website about computer music and music software that operated from the early 2000s until the end of the decade. Its 2003 home page presented it as "Mnemonic Music Site | Portal of the Modern Musician"[1]. It belonged to the Nizhny Novgorod segment of the web on two counts: it lived in the nizhny.ru domain zone, and under the second of its names it was registered as a participant in the 2004 Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet in the "Best Personal Website" category[2]. An early snapshot gives August 4, 2000 as the founding date[3], while the line at the bottom of the page reads "Copyright © 2000-2002 iTEX Design Studio, Greg [mnemonic] Zemskov"[1].

Early years: trackers and samples

The snapshot of April 1, 2001 is almost empty: all that survives of the page is the title, fragments of the up.ru and Top100 counter code, and the line "Created 04 August 2000"[3]. The content of this period is hinted at by the page's service descriptions, which list "music tracker mp3 it wav documentation faqs russian english links free hardware software," and, in the Russian keyword list, "samples loops documentation," "trackers sounds sound GUS sound blaster," "acid jazz rock pop metal bossa nova hip-hop rap techno"[3]. The list outlines the range of topics of the first years: tracker music, audio formats, documentation, and freebies, a word the list itself uses ("халява").

Portal of the modern musician

By 2003 the site had grown into a full-fledged thematic portal. The home page menu listed the sections "books," "sound / mastering," "other synthesizers," "music editors," "music 'hardware,'" "trackers," "dancefloor," "storeroom," "samples," "tracker music," "my music," "plug-in's," "software," "forum," "links," "business card," "mailing list," "classifieds," "guestbook," and "catalog"[1]. As the home page put it, the site offered "a description of modern music software: samplers, software synthesizers, trackers, new releases, and much more"[1]. There was also a search box with two toggles: "on the site" and "in Yandex"[1].

The news feed for spring and summer 2003 shows what the site was living on: April 11 — "Sound Forge 4.5 > Mixing Several Files into One," April 14 — "Sound Forge 4.5 > Resampling," April 24 — "Secrets of Low-Budget Music-Making Technologies: How to Get Good Sound on a Multimedia Computer," April 28 and 29 — three parts of a series on sampling, May 7 — four parts of an article on GigaSampler "from scratch," May 13 — a piece on Cool Edit[1]. From June 25 to August 1, a series of at least six parts, "FruityLoops 4 > Make Your Own Hit," was published[1]. A separate line in the news recorded a housekeeping item: "Dead links in the 'links' section have been cleaned up"[1].

The site openly sought money to cover its upkeep. As the home page stated, the owner was ready to purchase "original articles on music topics for publication on this site in exchange for impressions in a music banner-exchange network," and he sold impressions in the same network "at a price of $0.5 per 1,000 impressions (actual price $1 per 1,000)" with the note "Haggling is acceptable"[1]. Right there, an exchange of banners and links with other music sites was offered, and at the bottom of the page stood a block of categories unrelated to the topic: "amplifiers," "MiniDisc decks," "CD players," "car audio," "DVD," "partnership"[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet

In the results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, the "Modern Musician's Portal" (Портал Современного Музыканта), at the address mnemonic.nizhny.ru, appears under number 175 in the "Best Personal Site" category, receiving 52 votes by e-mail and none by SMS[2]. This is the eighth line among the thirty-seven entrants in the category: ahead of it stood "Nizhny Novgorod Extreme on the Internet" with 156 votes, the quintet "Chyorny Pyos" ("Black Dog") with 114, and "Photo Project Well" with 109; below it were the site "All the Mysteries of Carlos Castaneda" and the official site of Evgeniy Gurin with 38 votes[2].

In the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru ranking, no line for this site was recorded, so there is nothing from which to judge its traffic on the scale of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet; the general context of those statistics is examined in the archival study of the ranking. In content, the site was not local but nationwide: there are no local topics, addresses, or phone numbers on the surviving pages.

Move and Closure

By the summer of 2006, there was no longer a substantive site at the address. A snapshot from July 1, 2006 shows a two-line page: "We have moved! New address: www.music4sale.ru"[4]. Beneath the moving announcement was a list of links that no longer had anything to do with music software: "free backing tracks," "music catalog," "cottage, cottage rental," "cottages for sale," "build a cottage"[4]. The domain lived out its days as a link farm.

The latest surviving snapshot is dated February 13, 2009; by then, a single service phrase was all that remained of the page: "This site requires JavaScript support."[5] The page no longer had a title or a description. What became of the project after the move to music4sale.ru is not recorded in our materials.

Home Page by Year

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2009 (archive)