Sonic State Celebrates 30th Anniversary
Sonic State shared this video, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their launching in 1995.
The web was a very different place in 1995 – before Youtube, before Facebook, before Twitter/X and before MySpace. Sonic State launched in the early days of the Web and quickly established itself as an important destination for anyone interested in instruments and recording.
Back then, key destinations for musicians included Sonic State and a handful of popular web forums. If you’re old school, you might remember visiting the Harmony Central forum or Yahoo Groups to discuss music gear, and Sonic State to see what’s new.
There was a lot less to talk about then, because the analog renaissance had not happened yet and making music ‘in the box’ using standard computers wasn’t really even a thing yet. Propellerhead came out with ReBirth a few years later.
Synthesizers.com had not launched yet and it would be a year before Doepfer introduced the first Eurorack modules. So very few musicians had any experience with modular gear, outside of a small number of systems in studios and universities.
This changed very quickly as adoption of the World Wide Web took off. The Web became accessible to the general public in 1993, and by the late 90s it was world wide phenomena.
In the late 90s, money started pouring into Web startups, which led to the ‘dotcom boom’. It was the 90’s version of today’s AI hype. The Web buzz led to massive adoption by people living in industrialized nations. A lot of money was invested in dumb ideas for websites, and this led to the stock market spiking higher than it had ever gone before.
Then, reality kicked in. People discovered that the technology ‘hype curve’ was a real thing, investors started expecting web startups to actually make money, and Web-first companies started tanking. The stock market crashed on March 10, 2000 and, by 2002, the NASDAQ index had lost a whopping 78% of its value.
Through all of this, Sonic State kept going and kept getting better at what they do. They were joined by sites like Synthtopia, Matrixsynth and other sites that were run by people that understood the potential of web publishing and the importance of ‘Internet speed’.
These early music gear sites were joined by sites from publishers like Keyboard, Electronic Musician and Future Music, who published the most important print magazines of the day. The magazines all did a great job of publishing monthly issues, with gear news, interviews and tutorials. Keyboard magazine even had the synth nerd version of a pinup of the month – with a prominently positioned foldout of the most drool-worthy new synth.
Unfortunately for these magazines and their readers, though, the publishers never seemed to fully commit to the Web, because print was where they made most of their money. They all seemed to stick to publishing news on a print timetable – so they’d publish most of their gear news on the day that they released their print magazine, often weeks after it was covered at Sonic State, Synthtopia and other sites and forums.
As a result, the audience for Sonic State and other early music gear sites grew at a fantastic rate. They were moving at ‘Internet speed’ and they were immediately available to anyone in the world that had a Web browser.
30 years later – Sonic State is still one of the most important sites for music gear news and insight, and has established a reputation as one the most trusted destinations in the world for electronic musicians. And those print magazine websites? Not so much.
“Do You Even PWM, Bro?”
Nick Batt discusses the fullsome girth of a massive PWM patch.
Along the way, Nick Batt established himself not only as the face of Sonic State, but one of the most trusted music gear experts in the world. Beyond the memes, Nick Batt’s thorough, articulate and fair reviews of music gear have long been ‘must watch’ content for electronic musicians.
While Sonic State is recognized the most for their reviews and streaming videos, their biggest impact over the last 30 years may be in helping to create a worldwide audience for electronic music gear.
Back in 1995, the audience for synths and electronic music gear was pretty small. Instruments were expensive, and we were lucky to get a dozen new synths a year. If you wanted modular gear, you probably had to DIY it. By establishing a worldwide audience for gear news, Sonic State helped grow the audience of people that actually bought gear. This led to the renaissance of analog gear, the explosion of modular synthesis and today’s ‘golden age’ of synths.
I’ve personally been a huge fan of Sonic State for all this time – as a reader, as a staff writer for a couple of years, and as an industry colleague. It’s been great to see what Andy McCreeth and Nick Batt have done with the site. They deserve to be recognized on their ‘pearl’ anniversary – for having the vision for what an Web music news site could be, and the intelligence and execution to turn that vision into a successful business that’s lasted three decades.
Congratulations to Sonic State on its milestone.
