When was Rock Report set up and can you tell me something more about it?
 
Rock Report was set up in 1989 to promote AOR (adult orientated rock), melodic (hard) rock/metal and progressive rock/metal. Immediate cause was the lack of coverage in the better known music magazines that made us decide to create a new mag, totally dedicated to the styles just mentioned.

The very first issue of the Rock Report mag had the English band Dare on the cover and hit the streets way back in May 1989. During its existence the mag underwent many changes. Up to issue 14 Rock Report was nothing more than a copied fanzine with an edition limited to a couple of 100 copies. Nevertheless slowly but surely the circulation kept growing to the extent that in 1991 it was decided to go in print. A cheap printer was quickly found and although the delivered quality was rather poor, with every issue of the mag released the circulation kept on growing.

Another big step forward came in 1997 when the Rock Report staff decided to go on board with a professional printing-office. A better decision couldn't have been made, because the sales figures started to grow considerably. Artists, bands, labels, record and management companies started to see Rock Report as the reference in the Benelux and so more and more people began asking (some of them even begged) us: "When will you publish Rock Report in English?" Realising that English is not our mother tongue, we felt reluctant to the idea at first and so, we didn't dare to take that risky step. However, early 2000 pressure from website visitors from all over the world as well as from many acts and labels became so high that we plucked up courage and finally decided to switch from Dutch to English.

June 2000 was another milestone in the history of Rock Report: our very first issue written in English (issue 45) finally hit the streets! Both the magazine and the website, which was set up in 1996, are put together by a small group of extremely enthusiastic lovers of AOR, melodic rock/metal and progressive rock/metal who are doing all work for free. Rock Report is indeed a non-profit organisation, only formed to promote our favourite (but underground) styles of music.

With the internet becoming more and more important, at the beginning of 2002 it was decided to stop publishing the magazine (issue 50 was our final one) in order to concentrate on the Rock Report website alone. At the end of June a domain name ( http://www.rockreport.be ) was registered and a couple of weeks later the first version of the totally revamped website was online. The rest - as they say - is history…
 
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