First Anniversary

by editor Michele Catalano

One year ago today, I posted a “letter from the editor” on I Have That on Vinyl. It was the first post on the site (I also wrote about Aztec Camera that day) and was a welcome of sorts.

I asked online for people to contribute essays to the site, to tell me about their favorite records, their favorite record stores, and their experiences with music. I didn’t expect much and thought I’d be doing most of the heavy lifting on the site. 

Well, I was inundated with pitches and essays, and I Have That on Vinyl was in full swing. Since then I have published 197 essays, 34 interviews, 116 posts from me, and 59 Q&As. We have heard from people from all walks of life, from Kenya to Long Island. I have interviewed famous musicians and regular people like you, who all had fascinating and poignant stories to tell you about their record collections. I told you about so many of my favorite records. 

IHTOV has been better than I expected it to be. I honestly thought it would last a couple of months at best, and then I’d run out of stories to tell. Well, it’s a year later and I’m booked with essays until the end of February. I have people asking me all the time if they can write for me. I feel in my heart like this has been a success. It’s hard to measure success—I don’t really look at the stats, and I make no money off the site—but I think the number of essays I’ve published and stickers and totes I sold points toward success. 

Success here looks like touring musicians taking time out of their schedules to talk to me (e.g., John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, Mike Huegenor of Jeff Rosenstock’s band, and Eric Hudson from Foxing). It looks like incredible writers who have told us about their love of music, about their lives and how certain albums have stories to go with them. It looks like hiring an editor and gaining a friend. It looks like people clamoring to help me by providing physical and emotional support, whether it’s helping to make a zine, installing comments, buying stickers, or donating to the continued maintenance of the site. I appreciate it all.

One year. I still can’t believe it has lasted this long. And it’s thanks to you that it has. Thank you for reading everything published, for contributing your words and emotions, for the donations that helped me pay writers for a while, for promoting IHTOV on social media, and for the countless other ways in which you’ve supported the site.

I want to make some improvements to the site in the coming year, mostly cosmetic changes to make the experience better. I have some special things planned as well. And as always, it will continue to be blog-like, with no ads, no popups, just words from everyday people.

I hope to go at least another year doing this. I hope you continue to stick around.

Thank you to the following people, who have been instrumental in keeping IHTOV running: