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About Diskery

Diskery History

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Diskery 'Lexicon' Database Application 2.2.5
Programmed by: Derek McDonald.
Software: Copyright 'Diskery Project Consortium'.
Text & Selected Images: Copyright 'Diskery Project Consortium'
Diskery operates as a private but not-for-profit rock music museum website dedicated to record collectors.

Access to the website site is 100% free to the general public. It is privately financed, but does accept donations from the public. It is not impossible to see everything in one sitting, and we update it regularly, so please visit as often as you like.

According to comments from past viewers, Diskery has solved many bar disputes, won people prizes in trivia contests, helped in the selection of music, assisted students in paper/homework research, inspired new artists, gave a template to web developers and programmers, a fantastic time killer/waster, is like a CD-ROM encyclopedia on the web, etc.

Diskery is one of the first and oldest music related websites on Earth in continuous operation. Diskery started on 15 October 1997 as the website face for the RRCA (Rock Record Collector's Association) by computer programmer, author, entrepreneur, and inventor Derek McDonald. Diskery was a merging of his passion for music and formal education in computers and business; the RRCA being a not-for profit private operation he started as a gathering point for fellow record collectors. The name Diskery is a now obsolete English word meaning Record Company and was chosen for this site because of its music industry motif and was discovered by Derek while watching an episode of the American prime-time television trivia game show Jeopardy he remembered watching sometime in 1996.

The DISKERY.COM domain was registered on 10 September 1999. This was the very first website on the Internet to have that name, the word never existed at the domain registrars until we named this site! Previous to the registration, the site was merely a directory listing on a Unix server as a subset of the RRCA! Remember, this was a time before the whole Facebook and social media revolution, most people still accessed the Internet via a dial-up modem; it was also a time before MP3 downloading, Pirate Bay, Napster and the whole lot. Where-as RRCA handled the archives database, Diskery was the commercial division selling indie band CDs online. The music sales division was shut on 12 December 2012; after some 13 years!

From the beginning, Derek wanted to start publishing music to further promote indie bands, many of whom he had met via RRCA and became good friends with (and still is). So, with the advice of a lawyer, he decided to use his business experience and education to incorporate and amalgamate the enterprises. So, Diskery became a wholly owned part of that new organization called 'Emperor Multimedia Corporation' in 1999. The mandate of Diskery, and that of the RRCA, remained the same and operated as two separate but equal entities under the umbrella of the master corporation until 12 December 2012.

During the 'corporate times', several in-house music releases were also created (see our section on "Special Projects") and Diskery quickly grew to become the crown jewel of the newly founded Emperor Multimedia. Diskery now expended to sell music produced by Emperor Multimedia and affiliates and obtained worldwide distribution rights and access to retail shops, as well as on-line catalogs. At it's height Derek was (through the enterprise) hosting radio programs, performing with bands and featured in music videos, writing articles and reviews for magazines, even computer software... you name it - it was a fun time in the rock and roll lifestyle!

Yes, as things happen, time passed and by 2008 sales declined as the economy for pre-recorded music faltered. Quite simply time marched on. Although Emperor Multimedia struggled to keep the sales afloat, the choice was eventually made to fold up music sales in 2012, leaving the RRCA division orphaned.

Derek bought out the assets of Emperor Multimedia from its other stakeholders, including all interests to the projects, licenses and yes - Diskery. The site was frozen to modernize the technology and move the RRCA over to re-open it as you see it now, under the umbrella of the 'Diskery Project Consortium'. Make no mistake it is a project - a long lasting and never ending project that merges music, software, text, pictures and the Internet into one huge interactive website much in the style of the Emperor Multimedia philosophy of Multimedia for the Masses!" No longer do we sell music, but, today, operate as a music museum and archive, taking over the mandate of the RRCA. The RRCA is now Diskery and this website is what remains of that once vast dream of 'empire'.

Originally the RRCA covered only heavy metal music, and this is why the database is so full of heavy metal, but with the re-launch that changed to start to include all rock based music!

This website, the database and much of its contents were written by Derek himself, by hand... right here... no outsourcing... no university student project or government think-tank.

During 2017 Diskery went under a major renovation whereby it finally became fully mobile adaptive. In our laboratory we found a way to simulate the running system and could now design and test the system before launching changes to the public (see the section: "Technology Used" for more information on what makes Diskery work).

Diskery today acts as a personal expression for love of music and those who create it. For some 20 years Derek has kept the operation going. Unlike other archive sites, this one is maintained with passion by people who are not only a part of the music business but also fans of it. Hope you will enjoy this site as much as we did creating and presenting the data to you!

At Diskery you will rarely see opinion in our articles on artists or their works - we repeat - rarely - but it is not unknown unless it is a widely held belief amongst historians; this is a site about facts - leave the opinions for others as we are not interested in thoughts, we want facts. We also know we will never archive every band, but we try to get as many as we can - it's just a matter of resources, although this site is very automated - humans are still needed for the writing!

Diskery is proudly local - located in beautiful Burlington, Ontario, Canada.

As AC/DC once sung (and was the motto of the old RRCA), "For those about to rock - WE SALUTE YOU!"


Skellian: The trademark logo used by all projects directed by Derek McDonald.

File record #: 5


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