According to Alexa, nialler9 is now more popular than hotpress.com. Eoghan is right, online subscription services are dead. There is no way that a magazine with a 30 year history should be trailing behind a one man operation 2 year old blog. The search engine hits alone should easily raise their traffic above this blog’s traffic.
Click the image to see the chart in full.
While were are on the subject of site metadata, it’s only been 3 days since my mixtape went up and 2,500 people have downloaded it since! Mega! Thanks to all who downloaded it and to those who wished me a happy birthday on the blog and over the weekend. Ledgebags, one and all.
Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005 . He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Cara Magazine, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, founder of Lumo Club, club promoter, event curator and producer of gigs, listening parties & events in Dublin.
Don’t be fooled, man. Every single tech-savvy person will tell you that Alexa is THE WORST tool when it comes to traffic measurement.
I’d say in this case the Alexa figures are probably right.
Nobody visits hotpress.com — almost everything useful there is hidden behind a “pay wall” for subscribers only, and that kind of upfront wall tends to weed out all but the most dedicated fans/readers. They could probably make more cash by (a) opening the site up and removing the “pay wall”, (b) cleaning up the design and adopting a more bloggy format a la Pitchfork and (c) using ads instead to make money. But I guess they aren’t really arsed to deal with this interwebs thing — they’re probably still happy enough with the paper, as it quietly renders itself irrelevant.
On the other hand, I’d guess you probably do have the top Irish music site, here. I know a good few people who now read this blog as their primary online source of info for local stuff.
ps: happy birthday! good selection in the mix there 😉
@Justin: “I’d say in this case the Alexa figures are probably right.”
They could be. But could be not. compare my site filter27.com against chromewaves.net. chromewaves get more than twice the traffic my site does an the bar looks identical. Alexa is good for shit. Trust me.
One more example:
compare google.com versus youtube.com in terms of pageviews. Do you really want me to believe that Youtube is actually bigger than Google? You must be out of your mind.
@Sotek — sure, the Alexa data is tricky, due to the selection-bias problem it has: http://norvig.com/logs-alexa.html , but I would guess that nialler9 readers and Hotpress.com readers would be more or less equally likely to have the Alexa Toolbar installed.
having said that, I don’t know wtf is up with the google/youtube figures. maybe google.com is suffering because the other google “front end” sites, like google.ie/google.fr/google.co.uk/google.ca aren’t counted, who knows…
@Justin: “I don’t know wtf is up with the google/youtube figures. maybe google.com is suffering because the other google “front end” sites, like google.ie/google.fr/google.co.uk/google.ca aren’t counted, who knows…”
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/alexa-says-youtube-is-now-bigger-than-google-theyre-wrong/
After comparing to other tools, it seems to suggest the same. I’m aware of Alexa’s supposed inaccuracies. Still think it’s an interesting chart to look at, expecially as the difference between the two sites are massive in operation.
justin, thanks for the wishes.
Alexa data does indeed need to be taken with a pinch of salt but – when taken in conjunction with at least one other web traffic measurement service – can give a good idea of comparative traffic ** trends **. Once I look up a site on Alexa I also check out what compete.com (also not a perfect 100% accurate tool, when considered in isolation) has to say about the site’s traffic and see if there are any trends for the site that emerge across the two data sets (compete.com BTW has much more credible traffic stats for Google vs. Youtube).
Compete has what I suspect are also more believable comparisons for Nialler9 and Hotpress.com (see them here: http://tinyurl.com/3x34ov – they show it as a statistical tie between the two). Put this together with the Alexa graph and I say it’s fair to conclude Nialler 9 and Hotpress.com attract the same levels of traffic.
Compete seems more accurate alright. Still though, my point is there is no way a professional magazine with so much content should have similar traffic to myself.
Which is the point you made Eoghan except for without the nialler9 comparison.
Nialler: No way a professional magazine with so much content should have similar traffic to yourself? You are absolutely right. But that’s the way it is and IMO it is so for two reasons:
1) HotPress.com haven’t got a clue / don’t care what to do with their resources (a potentially valuable digital archive spanning 30 years)
2) You know what to do with your (more limited but effective) resources. And you’re doing it.
Excuse the nauseous drift into pop codology but, as in all walks, ‘more with less’ always has more than a fighting chance to catch those choosing a more complacent ‘less with more’ path.
Anyways, I too doubt they have the will to do what it would take to turn the HP site around. May I be proven wrong, etc…
Do hotpress.com even have their 30 archive available behind that subscription fence? I subscribed the first year for €10 but it was €20 the next year so i just thought f#%it. I’d visit their site if it was open but pay €20 to look at one or two articles, no thanks. Interesting to see the NYT open up, looks like they have seen the light. How about the Irish Times next?
You won’t get a better source that the HP archive is fully digital and ready to go: I scanned all the thousands of fucking pictures…
Interesting stats Niall…I couldn’t download the burfdee mix tho :/
Ha ha, lovely job! Is it still going to be pay per access?
Burfday mix is fine for download, I just checked….
“I would guess that nialler9 readers and Hotpress.com readers would be more or less equally likely to have the Alexa Toolbar installed.”
sorry but a hearty LOL at this. you can’t fit an Alexa toolbar on leather trousers Justin!
I don’t doubt though that this site could be as popular or more popular than HP, the main motivation here is turning people towards new music…..that’s so so far from what HP does.
What does HP even do again?
Sorry, just remembered to check for replies now.
As far as I know, the archives will be pay-for-prints. I imagine browsing will be FOC, to encourage more sales.
I agree that the sub fees are a dead horse but all’s not lost; re-haul of the site is in the works…
[quote comment=””]I imagine browsing will be FOC, to encourage more sales[/quote]
What’s FOC?
What would be interesting would be to sell the archive on CD, I might go for that if the price were right. I wouldn’t mind browsing the Hot Press issues of my youth, while reliving the golden years of irish rock 😉 My wife made me dump my hard copies years ago, at least I still have my vinyl..