About Us

Become a Propagandist!

Add an artist. If you ran across a band or artist you like that you would like more people to know and we don't have them on this site, create an entry for them (see the FAQ pages for step-by-step and guidelines).

Add a venue. If we do not have an entry for some venue in your town that you know about, create an entry for them. Who knows, one day, a traveller who's visiting your town might decide to visit them because of your piece.

Correct our content. If you disagree with something we have written, if you see us missing a point you think should be made, if we have any gaps, if we've been sloppy,  drop us a line. If you are a regular registered user, you also have the option to add a comment. If you have the privileges to edit content created by others, jump in and fix the article.

Share this site. The more people are aware of this site, more will sign up as propagandists, which means more artists an venues will be added, and knowledge base will become broader, deeper, and more diverse. Everyone benefits from that.

Our goal is to provide a platform for musical discovery.

We are fortunate to be living at a time when we are aware of all the new bands and artists emerging from all corners of the earth, almost in real time as they are beginning to find their footing. It is also a time when musicians have access to a rich array of musical traditions and histories that were previously harder to reach, giving them more sources to draw inspiration from and cross-pollinate across all kinds of boundaries. On the flip side, this leaves us fans with the daunting task of sifting through all these names coming up one after the other to find the subset of artists we can get excited about. It makes us wish that we had someone reliable we can turn to and ask "what is this band like?" or "what is that artist's sound?" to get a quick run-down so that we can decide which ones we would be interested in following up on.

Same thing with going to a venue for the first time and wanting to find out practical facts about the place so that we know what to expect. Or a festival. Or a record store. Or .... well we are open-minded about what other aspects of music fandom we might make a part of this site in the future. 

That is the role we would like The Propaganda Site to play: become a place fans will visit in order to find an overview of some band or artist they are curious about, perhaps because their name appears as the opening act on some show, or among the small print acts listed in a festival line-up. Or find out basic facts about a venue: how big it is, where things are, where to park, if they have an ATM, etc. Things only people who have been there can tell us.

We would like to be the site where you, the reader, can not only get this information, but also contribute to let others know what you have found out.

Long story short...

We are two long-time friends and on and off work buds who ended up with some extra free time on our hands when the world shut down due to the pandemic in 2020, and decided this would be as good a time as any to put whatever we had learned over the years to good use and start doing something we love and feel excited about -- for a change. The Propaganda Site is what came out of that thought.

And that was pretty much it.

This is the "credit roll" part.

• The Propaganda Site was built on Drupal 9.
• The theme is based on the W3CSS theme developed by Alaa Haddad.
• Wayne Eaker at DrupalTutor gave us our basic training.
• We made use of plenty of modules created by the Drupal community at large.
• We got through the last few miles with the help of the good people at Agaric.

The Propaganda Site is intended as a knowledge base of bands and artists as well as places where fans can see them play live. A knowledge base is a repository of information that can be used for something. This is a place where fans can deposit and share information about artists and venues that are useful to other fans.

Artists: We are focused on bands and artists that are either just starting up, or have been around a while, but have not gained a broad audience. In other words, artists with small to mid-level following that you, as a music fan, think ought to get more recognition. We would like to be the place where word of mouth gets amplified and reaches people on a platform designed to do just that. A megaphone, if you will. 

Stores: Local record stores are special and we love them. We check them out whenever we are traveling. They can also be fairly specialized in what they sell, whether it is the second hand market vs new releases or focus on particular genres. Every store has its personality and is a part of a fan's treasure hunt. So we would like to have good, useful information on what we would be likely to find in the bins before we stop by. 

Venues: We are mostly interested in small to mid size local venues where we are more likely to find relatively unknown bands and artists. Because these are typically small local places, not everyone knows about them and often need some basic, practical information about the layout and what to expect if they are going. We would like to be able to provide this knowledge for every location we have readers.

Events: We have built a schedule aggregation system into the site to give fans a sense of where the band or artist they are reading about is playing next, or who is playing next at the venue they are looking up. We do not sell tickets ourselves, but provide the links for the outlets who handle that part if you are interested in a show.

Festivals: We track some of the major festivals, especially as they announce their line up. We want to cover as many of the non-headliners as we can. We also provide an overview for the festival, what kinds of music one can find there, and links to purchase tickets, badges, what have you. Currently our focus is on the larger ones, but that may change over time.

Labels: They may look like trivia to casual fans, but labels are crucial part of an artist's ecosystem, providing valuable resources whether technical, legal, or marketing-based. Long time fans also know that a lot of them have their own character and serve as curators in a way. We currently have a small but growing collection of entries for labels as well.

Authors: Most important component of this site is you, the music fan. Whether this site could be of any use to anyone depends on readers becoming authors (or propagandists, if you will) and adding their content in the same spirit as the site was intended: a place to share one's love of up and coming or criminally overlooked bands and artists who deserve to be enjoyed by more people. All we can do on our side is to get the ball rolling with the hope that others will keep it going and help the site grow and become useful for all of us.