Another record year for Slipped Disc as we head for new heights
mainSlipped Disc had 23,757,707 readers in 2020, which works out at over 2 million a month when we take into account one unaccountably blank summer week in the Google Analytics chart. So make than 24m.
Our readership numbers have risen consistently for the past ten years, thanks to your interest and engagement and the support of our commercial partners. Slipped Disc is by far the world’s most read classical music news site.
But we’re not resting on our laurels.
In the depths of the Covid year, we decided to invest in a building a new site to embrace extra editorial and other opportunities. It sould roll out in the next couple of months.
Watch this space, dear readers.
We’re going places.
Word to the wise: hire a proof-reader and fact checker. Your posts are riddled with careless and sometimes bizarre facual errors.
Indeed. Seconded.
Slipped Disc uses free labor for fact checking: us.
Facual errors and mipsrints, both. 😉
…. and typin erors in te coments.
You will be invited on the new site to contribute to our staff costs.
Norman, your mention of staff costs, as well as frequent use of “we” does beg the questions: how many paid staff are there (other than yourself), and what do you pay them, and what are the website build and running costs, and how does all this compare with revenue eg from “commercial partners” which I presume means advertisers ?
These aren’t intended as trick questions, I’m genuinely interested in the business model of a successful classical music blog.
Ha ha!
Good news. Who says opera and classical music are no long popular?
Happy New Year to Slipped Disc.
keep going norman your work is appreciated
Hopefully everyone knows your site is nothing more than a tabloid.
If it were only a tabloid, shame on us, regular visitors.
In my opinion, the quality ranges from tabloid to excellent.
Happy new year to Norman Lebrecht.
It’s more than nothing because it is a tabloid that I enjoy……….
The difference with a ‘tabloid’ is that on SD, often correct and instructive material is posted, and very useful information revealed in the comments – you just have to be a critical reader.
23,757,707 visits, pageviews, or different readers? These are all different things.
Exactly. See the first three comments.
Must be visits or pageviews…trolls reloading and thumb-upping their disgusting comments
It reads as ‘visits’. Nobody counts page views or checks reader’s identities.
Congratulations! And best wishes for a happy and healthy 2021.
Does anyone happen to know how tall was Verdi? He looks rather tall in this photo, though it may be the way it’s shot.
Same height as one Richard Wagner, but he (Verdi) IS in the foreground, so all a matter of perspective…and conjecture!
HNY, btw!
I like it the way it is. Why does everyone “improve”=ruin everything?
The comment section is by far the most attractive , the most spirited and the freest zone of the site. I hope it will remain this way.
I hope too, especially concerning the [redacted] and all of the [redacted].
I drop by most days and get a lot of pleasure from this site. Thanks, Norman! And Happy New Year to you and all your readers!
“Readers”, aka people who glance at your misconstrued headlines and comment on them, but don’t actually read the external links, eg the recent cancel Beethoven debacle. With “readers” like that, SD is just flypaper for the lowest-common-denominator, so these numbers are about as meaningful as ratings for The Big Bang Theory. This reminds me of that orange fellow who was always banging on about his own ratings and popularity… what happened to him again?
‘The Big Bang Theory’, which does not want to be more than an entertaining sitcom, is one of the most witty inventions of American TV and brilliantly done, in spite of the total lack of credibility of the characters. The quality is entirely distinct from any ratings.
Perspective is warranted, even if we all have picky caveats: congratulations are in order. These are very impressive numbers for a classical music platform, however you decide to splice the figures. And it is a portent to the rather different approach to sharing information and attracting interest that will be needed ahead for the whole field. Related, my humble suggestion would be to pay more attention to innovation in the field, to contemporary composers and their music (including in far places), and to non-traditional interpretations and venues.
I hope we dont have the probs after the last ‘upgrade’ where I couldnt get it to automatically show up in my email for the first 12 months.
Since an absurd post was let through comparing Riccardo Muti with Trump my esteem for this site has fallen considerably.
Last I checked, SD was a blog, run by one person. A very large number of people log on daily, free of charge, to read the many interesting articles. I therefore find the negative responses to NL’s post to be quite unfortunate and mean spirited : if you are offended by his content or spelling, simply dont check in here. Better yet, if you can do better, by all means, start your own blog.
The picture shows the earlier form of SD in the late 19th century, when it was merely a magazine optimistically printed on large sheets. And indeed Verdi closely followed the discussions. (At one time he forgot to turn-up for a rehearsel because of tempted to continue reading about all the debunking of Otello’s black face.)
soon Norman will sell out to Google for $3 billion.
Quality is more important than quantity. I see this after remarking on the considerable number of posters who seem to know nothing about music judging from their attacks on the musician’s person. I am further surprised the moderator allows such nonsense, notably the recent attacks on Riccardo Muti, made without actually knowing him. One person who does, and seemed to get on with him very well, is Norman Lebrecht and he is partly to blame for such libelous character assassination. Let’s have better content and blow the ignorant masses, Norman!
“Slipped Disc had 23,757,707 readers in 2020”
Or was it far fewer than that but many of them reading the blog quite often?
Or many have multiple aliases. The actual number may be 500,000 readers.