Resident Advisor
Type of businessPrivately held company
Type of site
music website
Founded2001; 23 years ago (2001)
HeadquartersLondon, England, UK
Area servedWorldwide
Founder(s)Paul Clement
Nick Sabine
Employees100
URLra.co
Launched10 August 2001; 22 years ago (2001-08-10)

Resident Advisor (also known as RA) is an online music magazine and community platform dedicated to showcasing electronic music, artists and events across the globe. It was established in 2001. RA's editorial team provides news, music and event reviews, as well as films, features and interviews. Resident Advisor also provides global event listings and ticket sales platform, club and promoter directories, artist and record label profiles, and the RA Podcast.

The company has its headquarters in London, with additional offices in Berlin, Los Angeles, New York and Melbourne.[1] The website won a People's Voice award in the 12th Annual Webby Awards in 2008.[2]

History

Resident Advisor was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2001 by Paul Clement and Nick Sabine as a website for providing news and information relating to the Australian dance music scene.[1][3]

As Resident Advisor grew both Clement and Sabine initially kept their day jobs and hired staff to help with the site.[1] In 2006, after Clement and Sabine had moved to the UK, they both began working full time on Resident Advisor and incorporated the company in the UK, with an office in Berlin opening 2007.[1]

RA Tickets was unveiled in 2008 to allow promoters of electronic music to sell tickets. RA Tickets launched a face-value ticket resale system.[4]

In January 2014, the first complete redesign in the site's history was announced, adding mobile support, responsive design, a new logo, full SoundCloud integration on artist pages and other features.[5] At that time, Resident Advisor started to have more than two million users per month.[5]

An article in The New York Times, published in July 2015, mentions Resident Advisor as "one of the most influential E.D.M.-focused sites".[3]

The company launched its first consumer-focused iOS app in 2015. The RA Guide, free in the App Store (iOS), takes the site's listings for clubs, festivals and concerts to the mobile market.[6] Apple featured RA as a curator, with the launch of Apple Music, to contribute electronic music playlists to the streaming service.[7]

In October 2020, following the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on British arts and culture organisations, RA received £750,000 from the Arts Council of England as part of the UK's Culture Recovery Fund initiative.

At the start of 2021, Resident Advisor launched a redesign of their existing website. The new design also coincided with a change to their domain name, migrating from residentadvisor.net to ra.co.[8]

Other media

The RA Podcast is a weekly mix of electronic music from top producers and DJs. It launched on 6 March 2006 with a mix from Troy Pierce. In 2010, Resident Advisor started a second podcast series titled the RA Exchange. The site defines the RA Exchange as a series of conversations with artists (e.g., Guy Gerber, Morgan Geist, and New Order), labels (e.g., Defected Records, Future Classic, and Rush Hour), and promoters (e.g., Decibel, MUTEK, and Sónar) shaping the electronic music landscape.[9]

Resident Advisor launched RA Films in 2011, starting with a documentary series called Real Scenes that covered music culture in Bristol, Berlin and Detroit. Over the following years, RA continued to produce a variety of video-based content including; live performances, interviews, and both short and long-form reporting. [10]

Annual polls

From 2006 to 2016 Resident Advisor conducted two annual voting polls at the end of each year under the name RA Poll. The first polls the publications readers, who are asked to vote for their top 100 DJs[11] and live acts[12] of the year.

Resident Advisor ceased the polls in 2017 due to concerns about diversity and their growing influence on the music industry.[13]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Jackson, Jasper (12 September 2016). "Resident Advisor founders: 'Fabric helped shape us'". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  2. ^ "General Website: Music". Webby Awards. The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
  3. ^ a b Sisario, Ben (12 July 2015). "Influential Site Inhabits Fringe of an Electronic Dance Music Culture". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
  4. ^ Malt, Andy. "Resident Advisor launches face-value ticket resale service". Complete Music Update. Retrieved 6 August 2014.
  5. ^ a b "Resident Advisor relaunches site". Resident Advisor. 26 January 2014. Archived from the original on 31 January 2014.
  6. ^ Dredge, Stuart (24 June 2015). "Electronic music website Resident Advisor takes its club listings mobile". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 July 2015. Retrieved 24 June 2015.
  7. ^ Dredge, Stuart (30 September 2015). "Is Apple Music worth paying for?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 1 October 2015. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
  8. ^ "RA launches new website". Resident Advisor. 5 January 2021.
  9. ^ Matos, Michaelangelo (8 July 2010). "In pod we trust". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 3 February 2014. Retrieved 26 January 2014. The first RA Podcast, 84 minutes of minimal techno from Berlin's Troy Pierce, appeared in March 2006, and four years later, the RA podcast sits comfortably at the top of the heap.
  10. ^ "Resident Advisor channel on YouTube". YouTube. Archived from the original on 1 June 2023.
  11. ^ "Resident Advisor Reveals Its Top 100 DJs of 2015". Billboard. 9 December 2015. Archived from the original on 12 December 2015. Retrieved 9 December 2015.
  12. ^ "Resident Advisor Releases Its Top 40 Live Acts of 2015". Billboard. 10 December 2015. Archived from the original on 14 December 2015. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  13. ^ "Opinion: Why we're stopping the RA polls". Resident Advisor. 22 November 2017.

External links

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