DPRP in General
What is DPRP?
DPRP stands for the "Dutch Progressive Rock Page" and is an extensive Internet site dedicated to progressive rock, progressive metal and closely related genres. The site provides information on a wide range of bands from various periods, whether it's the Seventies (with bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes), the Eighties (with its second wave of progressive bands bands like Marillion, IQ and Pendragon), the nineties (Spock's Beard, Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, Arena) and the current prog scene (Mostly Autumn, Pain Of Salvation, The Flower Kings).
Among these pages are reviews of the latest albums and DVDs, live concerts reviews, concert guides for the whole world and Holland in particular, an extensive news page which is updated every week, lists of recent and upcoming releases and many links to other progressive rock sites on the web. Other interesting sections of the page include the Specials (featuring many interviews), the new discussion Forum, and the highly popular column Counting Out Time, which features in-depth background information about milestone prog albums. Counting Out Time's little brother is called Forgotten Sons, in which we deal with obscure and forgotten bands and artists.
Since 1999 DPRP has offered a special 'notification service' called DPRP Update. Every time an update is done on the web site, regardless of which column, we inform all the subscribers on this mailing list about 'what's new'. Subscribers never have to miss the latest news and reviews again. One of the benefits is entry to our Subscribed Members competitions.
Every year DPRP organizes a Reader's Poll which you can find the results of in our DPRPoll section.
DPRP will continue to improve and expand the site to turn it into that which a lot of participants of the Poll already consider it to be: 'the best progressive rock Internet site in the world'. With a current average number of daily visitors of 3000 we are probably already the most visited prog website on the Internet.
Why is DPRP in English, considering it is called Dutch Progressive Rock Page?
We call our site the Dutch Progressive Rock Page since it all started with small enthusiastic Dutch team. We have expanded with the growth of the Ezine to include members from the UK, Sweden, Malta, and the USA. The main reason why our site is presented in the English language is to create more 'exposure'. We are trying to take a global approach and offer a site that's not just readable for people from Holland and Belgium. About 75% of the people that visit the site do not live in Holland, and since English is the most widespread language and commonly accepted as the universal language on Internet, it suits the site very well. Oh, and it's probably also the only language that the whole team can communicate in. Besides all of this, none of the team members has the desire to write all articles in both the Dutch and English language. DPRP takes enough of our leisure time as it is. ;-)
When and how did DPRP start?
The Dutch Progressive Rock Page started in 1995 with a single Internet web page about the then new band Arena. Because of the positive reactions, maintainer Martijn Albering decided to add some more information about bands in the same genre. After a year of slow progression both visitors of the site and bands alike started to acknowledge the page as one of the main information sources for progressive rock.
The process of updating all the pages regularly became a bit too time consuming for one person, but volunteers for various parts of the DPRP were found easily. We have a much larger team now, who are spending a substantial amount of their leisure time to update the many pages, to keep them fresh and interesting. Many bands, record labels and promoters, and of course our readers, back DPRP up with support and information.
In the summer of 1997 the server on which DPRP was located was shut down for several months and the site slowly started to lose its large following (at one time the site had 350 'visitors' per day). The need for a new provider became very clear in these frustrating months and after several set-backs with other potential internet providers a sponsoring agreement was made with Vuurwerk (www.vuurwerk.nl). The team started to re-design the pages and in November 1997 the Dutch Progressive Rock Page moved to their new 'URL' www.dprp.vuurwerk.nl. The site was redesigned by Mattias Norén, who is well-known for many album covers of recent prog (metal) releases.
The site then expanded and grew during the subsequent years. However, during 2002 it was becoming clear that the site was exceeding the hosting capacity and the team came to the conclusion that it need new hosting to give greater freedom. A company called e-Sound, based in the Netherlands, stepped forward and in January 2004 we transferred to www.dprp.net.
Who produces DPRP, and why?
DPRP is maintained by a team of Editors and Reviewers. Information on these folks can be found in DPRP's Contacts and Credits section. All individuals have a strong love for certain progressive rock bands or the genre in general. Most of them have been active for fan clubs or magazines in the past and have found DPRP to be the perfect outlet for their hobby. All work for DPRP is done on a voluntary basis and besides the respect and appreciation of DPRP's readers the only benefit for the editors is that they get to keep the CDs they review and they (only very occasionally) get offered free entrance to certain prog rock gigs.
Content almost originates naturally and automatically. Most team members are responsible for one or more tasks, like maintaining specific 'sub pages' like the CD Reviews or News page, or writing CD reviews.
Why doesn't DPRP sell CDs or have banners by bands or labels?
Our previous sponsor agreement with Vuurwerk prohibited commercial activities, so before our transfer we were not able to do so. However, even though we can now accept advertisement money, or even sell CDs, we prefer to stay as objective as possible and fully independent of any band or label. Sure, we have some very close contacts with some bands and record labels, but we do not enter into a commercial or financial relationship with them.
It is however needed that we will get some sort of cash-flow going (posting CDs to a large team of reviewers in 5 countries isn't particularly cheap), so in the future you might encounter these activities on the site.
Why doesn't DPRP have any MP3s or other audio samples?
Regarding MP3s, we will not provide any on our site. The main reasons are that the take up a lot of space and the copyrights issue. In Holland BumaStemra charges people for putting MP3s on web sites (damn crooks!). Since DPRP is a voluntary operation, it does not have any funds, should such a charge be made. Recently we have added links to the internet pages where samples are available in our CD reviews. We thereby hope to solve this small shortcoming.
How many visitors does DPRP have?
We get about 3000 unique visitors per day, that is 3000 different computers logging on to our website each day. DPRP has a core of very loyal readers who visit the page several times per week, so the number of monthly visits is well within hundreds of thousands. The number of unique visitors per month is around 35,000.
When is DPRP updated?
Whenever we have an update! Some sections are updated on a weekly or monthly basis and we try to maintain the following guidelines:
The Releases and Links pages are updated continuously, so keep checking back these!
Of course there is always the chance that a certain section doesn't get updated a certain week, or that it appears a day late, but in general we try to maintain these guidelines.
I would like to write for DPRP. What are the possibilities?
Under certain circumstances, we would be very interested to add new people to the team. First of all, the potential new team member should have some basic knowledge about HTML writing and should be able to produce his own pages within a given framework/template. Knowledge of how to use an FTP application also helps.
Second, preferably he/she should have experience in writing (fluent) English texts about the genre. Substantial knowledge about progressive rock is of course a must.
Third, the person should be willing to perform multiple tasks within the team. For instance, maintain his own column but also be willing to write CD and Concert Reviews (at least 4 a month).
It should be pointed out here that we prefer that our reviewers are willing to writing exclusively for DPRP rather than write the same review for multiple sources.
Finally, new editors should be willing to spend enough time on DPRP. Four hours per week can be considered a minimum. We rather have a small active team than a large inactive one. If you would like to write for DPRP, have some good ideas for new columns and match these requirements, feel free to contact us.
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