Please have a look at the slideshow and read the story. Know your Mojo. Note that some of the features shown in the slideshow are historical and no longer available.
Ask what Razor GoMojo can do for you
Now let's establish what GoMojo is not:
- GoMojo is not
the bitch of controlled by a big media corporation or record label. We are independent
- GoMojo is not a place for sharing illegal downloads or doing a bit of second hand ticket business. We're into sharing information and we support face value ticket exchange only
- GoMojo is not the biggest site on the Web with an army of developers, but it's a site with a heart. Feel the love!
Right then what is GoMojo?
- GoMojo is a search tool for music information of all sorts.
- GoMojo is a shop that sells CDs and downloads from exceptional independent artists
- If you are an artist then GoMojo is a way for you to sell your music and connect with your fans. More profit for you and you even get to work with a real person, not just an automated system
- GoMojo is a label that releases and distributes original music
A not so brief history of Razor GoMojo
Razor GoMojo was not conceived by two dudes in a garage in sunny California. It was in fact conceived by one dude in a converted flat in not-very-sunny North London (UK).
However since this dude had been to several great gigs at The Garage and Upstairs at the Garage (London venues) in his time, he still felt that he was qualified to start a new
Internet "thing".
The dude, let's call him Casper because that is after all his name, was a strange hybrid of technology freak and music addict, possibly of alien (or at least Scandinavian) origin. In 1996 he created Forever Burning, the official Miranda Sex Garden site in collaboration with the band. For those who don't know, Miranda Sex Garden was a three-piece a cappella group singing madrigals, which somehow transformed into an alternative ethereal rock band. They toured with acts such as Nick Cave, Depeche Mode and Hole and they had an exceptionally devoted fan base. This was long before the days of MySpace. Casper ran that site for many moons while studying, dabbling with other musically related technology projects and developing medical imaging algorithms and applications for a living - for consistency.
In 2005 Casper found himself playing around with socalled Web 2.0 technologies and started creating a monster. It was a Windows desktop application, which combined a calendar and alert system for tickets going on sale, a feed reader, an advanced product browser for Amazon, an automatic photo tagging tool and uploader for Flickr and more. A true mash-up of technologies aiming to be the ultimate toolbox for music fans. Unfortunately it was too scary a proposition for most of them, when it was unleashed in the summer of 2006 under the name GoMojo. "Great idea, but I'm not remotely technical" they said. One particular fan, on receiving a free CD with the installer at a gig, added "If this does anything bad to my PC, I'll hunt you down like a dog". Casper sensed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for his creation!
So it was that Casper started the long process of bringing GoMojo to the Web. He put the kettle on and armed himself with a frightening amount of coffee (organic and fairtrade for extra smooth coding).
In June 2007 the new GoMojo Web was launched and spent some time crawling around the Web as a beta baby. Cheers to those who helped out with testing! This time around there was positive feedback and no talk about hunting - other than for cool music and information. A new version with a nicer design and lots of tweaks and extra features appeared in September 2007. On 26 September Razor GoMojo was awarded Mashup of the Day by programmableweb.com and attained a user rating of 5/5.
In 2008 GoMojo Desktop was fully retired. GoMojo Basement was launched - a new marketplace for independent artists selling their music and merchandise, cutting out greedy distributors. The first artist to be featured was Katharine Blake (one of the original founders of Miranda Sex Garden) with her solo album Midnight Flower. This started a new direction for GoMojo and eventually mailing lists and other artist services were added, while more artists and albums joined the party in the basement.
In autumn 2012 user profiles were completely revamped with a new cleaner design and the GoMojo Facebook app was launched. The app allowed artists to showcase and sell their music, both in physical and digital form, and fans to follow all their favourites through their personal app. GoMojo Sampler 1 - a free compilation of music from GoMojo Basement artists - was released. In December the first original release through GoMojo acting as a label was out: the single Angelville by The Shadow Kabinet.
In April 2013 the GoMojo label released the album Nostalgia For The Future from The Shadow Kabinet, which received some pretty cool reviews and was featured on BBC Radio London. In 2015 GoMojo provided label services to Bellissima Records for the presales and release of the long awaited debut album by From the Deep, which Mojo Magazine (not in any way connected to GoMojo!) called "Gothic, impassioned, haunting...a shadowy, erotic tribute to Nick Marsh". GoMojo continued its mission to provide an independent music platform, outside the control of the big media corporations. In February 2017 the GoMojo site stopped accepting new user accounts as part of a plan to refocus the efforts on a new platform, which GoMojo will eventually transfer to. In the meantime the shop and search tools remain open as always.
GoMojo is free to use. However you can support the project by buying stuff through links in GoMojo. Please do.
Casper of GoMojo would like to thank: code weaver extraordinaire a.k.a. the man who took on Facebook with his F.B. Purity a.k.a. my good old mate Stephen Fernandez of Excellatronic Communications - thanks for your help with comments, suggestions, research (i.e. surfing), early beta testing and for simply being a great friend through good and bad times. Richard Marks who founded Scarlet Mist, the UK ethical ticket exchange. Thanks for your support and your dedication to beating the ticket touts. Katharine Blake for all the great music, gigs and various music/Web collaborations we've had over the years. The Miranda Sex Garden fans - you all provided inspiration for the original GoMojo. The artists that have sold their music through GoMojo and of course all the lovely GoMojo users.
Finally, please report any bugs and stay up to date by reading the GoMojo News blog.
One word remains: Enjoy....
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