Support For The Country Record blog
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We have switched our donations to Patreon! Check us out at Patreon [dot] com [forward slash] ftcrsupport
We are For The Country Record, a blog that is currently celebrating 3 years in existence and 18,000 unique monthly visitors, but it hasn't always been easy.
We started as an idea from our founder, Vickye Fisher, as she was studying Popular Music academia in college. She wanted to find an outlet to discuss her opinions on various issues in country music, and decided to start a blog. When it came to finding a work placement for college, she decided she would use her few existing blog posts to pitch for guest articles on various major country blogs, and she ended up joining the teams of Country Music Tattle Tale, Nashville Gab (where she still writes), Country Music News Blog and UK Country Music (we should probably say at this point that Vickye is British despite her focus on US country). But she found herself not only linking to those articles from For The Country Record, but also yearning for total creative control, so come graduation in Summer 2013 she registered as a freelance journalist and set the little blog up as a full website.
At first, it was tough, and jobs and advertising revenue was far harder to come by than she had assumed. With money from her partner, family and extensive overdraft, she poured herself into the blog and built up quite a reputation. In fact, she became known for her blunt - but well-informed - honesty on all things country, and as she discovered more music she began to expand into Americana, roots, folk, southern rock, bluegrass, indie folk, blues - you name it, if it had some relation to roots music, she covered it. Artists such as Blake Shelton, Randy Houser, Brad Paisley, Tyler Farr, Cole Swindell and many more took offense to her conveying her true opinion rather than the promotional fodder of her counterparts, but many (not naming for endorsement issues) enjoyed her appreciation of creativity and attention to detail, and For The Country Record became a place that was known for portraying the real deal, no matter how ugly it was (of course, they spent a lot of time featuring a lot of amazing music too!).
But the For The Country Record story is not just about one woman refusing to kiss ass, and in 2014 Vickye took on a total of six writers - Steve Wosahla, Andrew Macbride, Nick Jarman, Josh Hammond, Jessica Melynchuk and Shannon Sigafoos, in addition to a freelance photographer, Amy Westney. Together they covered country and roots music across the US, UK and Canada, as well as Australia and Europe, and the blog continues to grow far beyond what anybody expected.
However, that comes at a price. Vickye happily foots the bill for web hosting, domain, design and tech support, but even with advertising and its increasing popularity For The Country Record is still hardly making any money, which means the hard-working writers are all working for free. This is where you come in. The £300 aim here is just a goal. There's no impending project coming up with an exact financial requirement. We would just ask if you would consider donating to us so that we can split it between our writers, both to say thank you for their prior work, and to compensate them for future writing. Hopefully by the end of this year we will be in a position to implement a full payment scheme, for all current and future writers. But for now, we ask that you donate what you can, for a website full of great music, great snark, and unmatched country/Americana music coverage and commentary from around the world.
Thank you! <3
We are For The Country Record, a blog that is currently celebrating 3 years in existence and 18,000 unique monthly visitors, but it hasn't always been easy.
We started as an idea from our founder, Vickye Fisher, as she was studying Popular Music academia in college. She wanted to find an outlet to discuss her opinions on various issues in country music, and decided to start a blog. When it came to finding a work placement for college, she decided she would use her few existing blog posts to pitch for guest articles on various major country blogs, and she ended up joining the teams of Country Music Tattle Tale, Nashville Gab (where she still writes), Country Music News Blog and UK Country Music (we should probably say at this point that Vickye is British despite her focus on US country). But she found herself not only linking to those articles from For The Country Record, but also yearning for total creative control, so come graduation in Summer 2013 she registered as a freelance journalist and set the little blog up as a full website.
At first, it was tough, and jobs and advertising revenue was far harder to come by than she had assumed. With money from her partner, family and extensive overdraft, she poured herself into the blog and built up quite a reputation. In fact, she became known for her blunt - but well-informed - honesty on all things country, and as she discovered more music she began to expand into Americana, roots, folk, southern rock, bluegrass, indie folk, blues - you name it, if it had some relation to roots music, she covered it. Artists such as Blake Shelton, Randy Houser, Brad Paisley, Tyler Farr, Cole Swindell and many more took offense to her conveying her true opinion rather than the promotional fodder of her counterparts, but many (not naming for endorsement issues) enjoyed her appreciation of creativity and attention to detail, and For The Country Record became a place that was known for portraying the real deal, no matter how ugly it was (of course, they spent a lot of time featuring a lot of amazing music too!).
But the For The Country Record story is not just about one woman refusing to kiss ass, and in 2014 Vickye took on a total of six writers - Steve Wosahla, Andrew Macbride, Nick Jarman, Josh Hammond, Jessica Melynchuk and Shannon Sigafoos, in addition to a freelance photographer, Amy Westney. Together they covered country and roots music across the US, UK and Canada, as well as Australia and Europe, and the blog continues to grow far beyond what anybody expected.
However, that comes at a price. Vickye happily foots the bill for web hosting, domain, design and tech support, but even with advertising and its increasing popularity For The Country Record is still hardly making any money, which means the hard-working writers are all working for free. This is where you come in. The £300 aim here is just a goal. There's no impending project coming up with an exact financial requirement. We would just ask if you would consider donating to us so that we can split it between our writers, both to say thank you for their prior work, and to compensate them for future writing. Hopefully by the end of this year we will be in a position to implement a full payment scheme, for all current and future writers. But for now, we ask that you donate what you can, for a website full of great music, great snark, and unmatched country/Americana music coverage and commentary from around the world.
Thank you! <3
Organizer
Vickye Fisher
Organizer
