Celebrating IVM's First Year Back

It’s hard to believe that it was a year ago to this day that IVM relaunched. It was delayed several months, but the fact it returned at all is something I know many are grateful (certainly myself included). We’ve seen new writers join and old writers leave; we’ve collectively discovered and highlighted plenty a myriad of bands. At the time of this writing, 2291 distinct reviews had been read over 4,300 times. We’ve seen a new arm of IVM in the form of a growing roster of bands, which has necessarily translated into more merch.

It would be difficult to encapsulate all of the moments and emotions surrounding the IVM team over the past year. Brandon certainly has gone above and beyond to maintain and grow this wonderful community we may at times take for granted. However, it was IVM’s absence that truly showed us how important IVM is to us all. Whether it’s have an outlet to discover new bands or a place to distribute this information, both staff and readers have so much to cherish.

I work with website data for my job, and while I understand that numbers aren’t everything, I still enjoy diving into some of the details for sake of curiosity. Here are some fun discoveries from the past year.

Most-Read Reviews

1. The Classic Crime – How to be Human
2. Kings Kaleidoscope – The Beauty Between
3. Cool Hand Luke – Cora
4. Demon Hunter – Outlive
5. Fleshkiller – Awaken
6. Zao – The Well-Intentioned Virus
7. Destroy the Runner – Void
8. DENS – From Small Seeds Come Great Trees
9. Falling Up – Falling Up
10. Death Therapy – The Storm Before the Calm

There’s a good mix of metal albums, return albums, and some natural fan favorites. I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of these show up on end-of-year lists.

Most-Read News Pieces

1. Nathan Johnson Loses Wife and Child
2. Red Announces New Album
3. Jason Dunn Announces New Band
4. Ongoing Concept Loses Members
5. Stream New Stavesacre Album
6. Supertones Announce Final Show
7. Cool Hand Luke Video Stream
8. The Classic Crime Debuts ‘Holy Water’
9. New Soul Embraced Album Coming Soon
10. As Cities Burn Addresses Breakup

Not surprisingly, the exclusive content and announcements from larger bands were popular with readers.

Now, onto some more granular stats:

360,000+ Pageviews

Most of the traffic is from Google, followed by social media, and lastly followed by people who have the site bookmarked or otherwise come directly to it. Each of these is pretty similar, account for close to 30% of total traffic.

Our biggest referral site is… Wikipedia!

On a good note, our traffic has been continually climbing, thanks to our growing reader base (and likely NOT due to Facebook’s limiting algorithms).

Tangent over.

There’s something surreal about having a small band discover and share your review just as much as it is having Facedown records repost something you’ve written (both of these have happened to me personally). I NEVER thought my writing would ever be seen by anyone. I’ve never had an outlet where people seemed to care much. Maybe I’ve engaged with some of you in the comments here and there, but for the most part, there’s a distance of sorts. I’ve looked at our reader base and they certainly are NOT primarily based out of central Wisconsin.

So, I’d like to ask this of you, on behalf of all of the staff. Comment below with some of your favorite IVM moments of the past year, tell us some bands we should have reviewed but didn’t, let us know what you’re looking forward to in life, or really let us know anything that’s on your mind. None of this is possible without our readers and bands and we want to bridge the gap a bit. I was a lurker for years before I went on staff. I know you guys are out there and I invite you to chime in as well.

Lastly, we would like to thank you. All of this is an endeavor of love and is all volunteer-run. There are costs of website hosting which are recouped through merch sales here and there. But we’re certainly not getting checks. We love that we can give you an organic experience on our site where you aren’t bombarded with ads. We hope you enjoy it too – and will continue to be a part of our community.