I’ve been into the programming business for some time now, in general I, amidst being born in a family with both my parents being artists, I did not end up in that in that business. but I can’t deny whether I notice it or not, I did take a bit of their taste to how I see things!
Anyway, let’s not talk about me, let’s talk Post-Rock Nation. What’s Post-Rock Nation you may ask?
Well before we get to that question, I need to make sure you know what Post-Rock (Post Rock) is. I’m going over this because as someone who has been listening to Post-Rock (it’s a type of music I assume you know by now), I know how niche and underground this kind of music is. I can guarantee that almost %99,9 percent of the people I met in life, at work, school, or the park never knew about Post-Rock.
Post-R0ck at its shortest could be defined as “a form of rock music, an experimental one”. but currently, I love the definition we’ve put up on Post-Rock Nation the most:
Post Rock is a genre that can inspire awe, wonder, joy, sadness, anger or any other emotion you can think of. It is a genre that transcends boundaries and genres and creates something unique and beautiful. Post rock is not just music, it is an experience.
Post Rock Nation – What is Post Rock?
So Post-Rock is another genre of music, pretty unpopular and not the cup of tea for Taylor Swift’s fans, is what I have been listening to daily, for the past 11 years. I vividly remember how the music got into me when I heard my first Post-Rock Song. Since then I thought it was just the type of music I loved. and through these years I enjoyed discovering more bands, artists, and songs that resonated with the way I understood the tunes and connected to them. It was tough, Post-Rock not being something popular and not the usual song you hear in your favorite bar, is a bit disappointing. Throughout these years I did sometimes feel disconnected from others many times. but I wasn’t all alone, I have managed to have some good friends who were into the same genre and we’ve had a lot of good times attending some underground concerts and festivals.
Throughout these years, I’ve asked myself several times, that I wish there was a place, a community and an online resource dedicated to Post-Rock, without really giving it a thought of building one myself. considering me being into a web development business, it did never cross my mind to commit into building one, I guess it was mainly because of knowing how small the community is.
Last year, around Christmas time, I was going through some hard time, which I’m still trying to recover from and as I was listening to Post-Rock to get through most of the days, I happened to think of the same idea, a place for Post-Rock music, artists and fans. something I think this genre deserves.
I pulled the trigger, discussed it with a couple of close friends, and they encouraged me to do it, I just sat on my laptop, created a folder called “postrock-project” and started coding. at that time, I didn’t really have an idea about what exactly I was going to build other than knowing that I wanted to list all of the Post-Rock bands, their albums, and their tracks!
I started crawling the web, but it was not easy, Post-Rock is not the kind of material that you can easily find through music websites or streaming services. so I started hand-picking the bands and building my database, I then used Spotify API to start looking for the list I had, and after some night-long efforts, I managed to map them and retrieve the rest of the data.
Then I thought of the problem I always had, easy access to these materials, so I thought that I would like to solve it for other fans, an easy way to access a brand new album or song on their favorite streaming platform. so I started looking on the web to collect links to other streaming services for the database I’ve just created. It was fun, I was drinking coffee and listening to Post-Rock while I sounded like an old-school author pressing the keys of his type machine.
Considering this project is in a completely different category of things I build, I did try to combine both technology and UI designs with the essence of music itself, the art part, so I tried to pay a lot of attention to the look of the website, how things are sorted and listed to provide a nice experience for someone enthusiastically looking for a new song he’s heard the name of.
Although Post-Rock is not popular, there are a lot of artists with such taste that make Post-Rock music, over the years I’ve listened to probably thousands of tracks! I remember I used to know the name of each of these tracks when I was new to the genre. Still, soon after I found more good stuff, I found it difficult to keep up with names sometimes. Considering that Post-Rock normally doesn’t involve vocals, bands try to use longer names for the albums and tracks to describe the blank script you will write in your mind when you’re listening to the songs.
This gave me the idea to build a search engine for Post-Rock, imagine a way to search through all the artists, their albums, and their tracks for keywords and get instant feedback! that’s how the idea subtlety the “World’s First Post-Rock Search Engine” was born and it became part of the Post-Rock Nation.
Since then, I’ve been spending more time on building new features for the website and making the UI as good-looking as possible, you can check the website’s roadmap to learn more about its development and the upcoming features.
I’ve built Post-Rock Nation with love for the genre, with respect for how it has helped me to get through my days for the past several years. Post-Rock Nation for me is not just a pet project, it is a passion project, and being able to get in touch and talk to artists and like-minded fans is one of the best rewards I’ve earned doing it.
This is the story of me building Post-Rock Nation, the Finest 🔥 Post-Rock website on the planet 🌍.
If you’re into Post-Rock and are reading this article, make sure to join to Post-Rock Nation community today, and let us build ourselves the place we all deserve.
If you’re a band, I’d like to have you onboard, You can submit your band on the website in under 1 minute, and I will take care of the rest of it.
If you like to write reviews for Post-Rock Albums, I would love to help share them with the rest of our users. You can read more on how to submit reviews on Post-Rock Nation here, we’ll post your reviews on our blog!
Peace
Mahdi
