Lucky I'm Sane After All I've Been Through
Article by Steven R. Rochlin
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  This month's edition (July 2002) concludes our third consecutive year of publishing the Enjoy the Music.com Review Magazine. While Enjoy the Music.com has been online for well over seven years, the Review Magazine has been a great resource for our readership. It is, frankly, hard to put into words how much i truly appreciate you, our loyal readership, while also being proud of all our writers. In the beginning, Dick Olsher and myself brought forth our longstanding insights while Bill Gaw began his ever-popular Audiolics Anonymous. It saddens me that my father Eli Rochlin has been too busy to continue contributing within these pages, though our Archives Section has many of his writings for all to read. So after three consecutive years of on time delivery i sit here and wonder how the industry has progressed?

While the first article by yours truly covered some of the history concerning recorded media, Dick Olsher wrote about SACD and DTS and other happenings. Bill Gaw proved to the world he is a card carrying audiophile/music lover by admitting that during vacations he can be found "rummaging through used record or CD sales". Blackie Pagano, yes the accomplished guitarist, lyricist and dude behind the nyNOISE show, was kind enough to share his music with us. Meanwhile equipment reviews included the DACT stepped attenuator, the Dynaco QD-1/IIL, and a Dead Ringer tweak. Interesting how if we add every SACD title ever available it adds up well under 1,000 and makes one wonder if there truly is any life in the format as a large multiple more vinyl records were released during the same period. Of course marketing is King, yet even with the mega bucks of Sony, Elcasette and Beta went the way of the Dinosaur.

We have all been blessed as three years later and the addition of articles by over forty other writers has been well received worldwide. In the beginning there was only a hope and a dream. Of course it helped that Enjoy the Music.com had already been around for many years. When the Review Magazine began we already had a great track record with our Classic website. We also began partnering with other audiophile magazines and back then we had "only" reported on seventeen shows.

With this issue we now provide reviews of hundreds of products, a multiple more of music, many editorials, have had four other prominent print magazines join us... and over fifty show reports. Sure we here at Enjoy the Music.com could congratulate ourselves, pat each other on the back and rest on our laurels. Of course this is not the case. There are quite a few ideas cooking and while some will go by the wayside, others will hopefully flourish. So what factors account for Enjoy the Music.com''s success?

Of course it is you! Our readers sending in comments, constructive criticisms and ideas. It is you who helps us to shape this website's path. Someone recently sent in an e-mail concerning our Search Engine, so it was changed within a matter of minutes. Not days, not weeks, not months... but in minutes! Like being the very first place anywhere in the world to review a product, the Internet has many advantages over legacy print media. No 1:1 space ratio of content to advertisers. No limiting the length of reviews for space considerations, and no worries about color printing costs either. Speaking of costs, we have no snail mailing expenses, distribution problems, torn pages, band paper binding jobs, etc. Ah, but all is not rosy in Lotus Land.

Within the past three years our server has been upgraded, our bandwidth needs have skyrocketed and, yes, we have made space for more advertisers. Enjoy the Music.com has our server on one of the world's best rated Internet backbone locations in the United States. While not inexpensive, our website loads fast and reliably. Our outsourced search engine is not the most economical, though even most in-house development teams can not truly compete with professional services. And as for advertising...

Let it be said here and now that i will not put up some facade of a wall between advertisers and myself. While no other writer handles this task, it is my responsibility alone. Far be it for me to mislead our readers by saying there is no connection between "Church" and "State" while "my wife" handles advertising. Many high-end audio magazine editors both online and print conduct this type of task. We simply can not afford to hire an outside source on such highly limited budgets. At the same time all the Enjoy the Music.com advertisements seen in print and online ventures is done by yours truly. Make no mistake; it is not 100% luck that Enjoy the Music.com has become one of the major online destinations for music lovers/audiophiles worldwide. Maybe it is due to 30% inspiration, 60% perspiration and 10% double bubble cola (to paraphrase the great wisdom and wit of Willy Wonka). Still, there is no "I" in TEAM and anyone who has ever visited this website has helped to shape it in one way or another. Our new main page is proof of that!

To begin wrapping this all up, we all should be grateful for all editors, writers, manufactures and distributors within this industry. It is a long and tiring task filled with joy... and despair. Given the hours personally put in, taking a job with the same hours in a mid-management position would easily pay more money! Virtually all of us do this as a labor of love. So why do we work so hard each and every day? To enjoy the music, naturally. Of course once goals have been met, longtime desires and rewards bring newfound excitement.

For me it was a fun bicycle (as if you noticed that first over the lovely young lady in a bikini). It is no secret that a true sports car or high performance Grand Touring vehicle has been desired. The Ferrari Lust page probably tipped you off many years ago to this fact. Add to that the exclusive tour of the Pininfarina facility and it all makes perfect sense. As a classically trained musician for many decades, one also realizes there is more to life than music. Even the great Michael Schumacher does more in life than drive a car (he enjoys football... or soccer for you Yanks).

In the end i can not thank you enough for all the support over the many years. Some days the feeling of throwing this laptop into a river (or smashing it into little pieces) crosses my mind. There is a time to "disconnect" to all this, and my driving is one of the many escapes (another in climbing mountains). Of course in the end what really matters is that you...

Enjoy the Music (Joe Walsh "Life's Been Good" right now with a few writer's embellishments right now),

Steven R. Rochlin