Take a Look at the New MFT Website and New Web Address!

Musical Family Tree has been around for over 15 years, and has changed a lot in that time. Our mission to spread Indiana music, and to connect artists and audiences across the state remain the same, but we’ve made a change recently.

In March we launched a new website and a new domain name. You can now find us at MusicalFamilyTree.org. Here you can read new blog posts, find out about MFT events and programs, and access our living archive of original Indiana music. We think this new site will be easier to use than the old one, and it looks good too...especially on mobile devices!

Justin Shimp, Co-founder of the creative firm BrainTwins, and MFT board member, built the new website. We’re all super stoked about it and hope that you will like it too. I asked Justin a few questions about the new site; check out what he had to say.

Why a new site? What’s up with the .org domain name?


Musical Family Tree, for most of its existence, has been more than just an online archive. MFT is a community organization whose efforts extend far beyond just the online archive. We are a 501c3 community organization whose mission is to nurture local artists, preserve our original music legacy, and build a shared community of music makers and music lovers. 

Due to the complexity and cost of insuring the archive as it currently exists, and keeping up-to-date with the latest web standards, we have chosen to create a separate site to describe and promote other aspects of our organization. That is what musicalfamilytree.org was built to do. The current archive will still always exist in some way on musicalfamilytree.com.

What happened to the old website? Can I still access it? 

The current archive still exists at its same domain: www.musicalfamilytree.com. You can still access it, control your band page (if you are an artist on the site), listen to local music using the MFT player, etc. Going forward though, we will start to lose some of this functionality, due to modern web standards. We're also working around an inability to adapt our current platform, due to insufficient funding needed to update/recode the site's infrastructure. Do not worry though! We will be keeping backups of everything, so when we can afford to update, nothing will be lost..  

Can I still upload/manage my music in the archive?

Currently, you can. But from our estimates, we might lose this functionality and others, such as listening online, by the end of the year. This puts us in a pickle, as a living archive going forward. We are hoping that the new .org website helps the organization attract the attention for funding and/or a technology partner willing to help power the site going forward. 

We also understand that the archive is very much archaic, as it's currently not serving artists as well as it could. Our ideal plan involves rebuilding the archive to better serve artist, but also listeners so they can discover and appreciate local artists, and for those artists to benefit from our ability to promote and spread their music using our platform. 

If you are having current issues uploading please read the blog post below which will help you navigate through some of the current issues with uploads on modern browsers. 
https://www.musicalfamilytree.org/blog-general/how-to-optimize-your-mft-website-experience

Have email addresses for MFT folks changed?

Official email addresses from MFT will not change. For any issues with the archive or technical help please email support@musicalfamilytree.com and any other organization inquires can be directed to info@musicalfamilytree.com. 

How can I get in contact with the organization or to help out?

If you have and questions or concerns about the move to the new website, click the “Contact us” link at the top of the page and let us know!

Also if anyone would like to contribute financially please donate to the organization by going to our donate page: https://www.musicalfamilytree.org/donate

If anyone would like to help us create an updated archive from the ground up either by your technical skills or financially please reach out to our board members and think about joining the MFT legacy committee. 

You are stepping down this year from Legacy chair, what will be your role moving forward with MFT?

Despite my board role changing, I will be still fairly active this year with volunteering for the archive and site from a support and project management standpoint. I will be getting updates from our current chair and helping out with any critical bugs or changes we make going forward.  I also still maintain the support@ email address and approve band submissions and comments on a weekly basis. 

Anything else you would like to say?

Thank you so much for being a part of MFT. If you are reading this far down into this blog post, I am very grateful for your attention and your patronage of our site. MFT has been a huge part of my life over the past 10 years, and it truly means a lot to me. I am so glad that people still use the site and I hope that one day we will be able to build an archive that will serve the current the local artists and listeners who love local art in the best way. We appreciate your patience as we have transitioned and evolved over time. 

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank a few people who have helped me get to this place. I feel like it's pretty unknown who the people of MFT are, and who is responsible for helping us survive for over 15 years as an archive/organization. 

First I want to thank Graham Watson who is our current developer. Without him we would be truly lost, and his ability to quickly help us with our complex-- and I'm sure at times annoying-- questions in a concise and logical way. Everyone who has used MFT in the last 4 or so years really can credit him with helping us keep it running to this point. 

Thanks to Jesse Charles who has taken up my spot and the responsibility of chairing the MFT legacy committee. Also, thanks to Jim Rawlston, our Board Chair, who has been instrumental in keeping us together through the multiple changes and challenges we have encountered in the last couple years. 

An additional special thanks to Jeb Banner, our founder who first introduced me to the site early on in its formation and thus inspired my love and passion for local music. Thank you to Jon Rogers, our first Executive Director, who provided me with the opportunity to be instrumental in MFT's early days and was incredibly inspiring to my company BrainTwins to become the business that it is today. Thanks to Erin Jeter, who helped move the organization into a performance space and was instrumental in connecting us to new genres and local organizations and people who are still with us today. Thanks to Ben Lesile who convinced me to become a board member and allowed me to focus my passion of local music through maintaining the archive and convincing me to go further and become website (legacy) committee chair.

I would also like to thank the original developers of MFT: Joe, Jordan, Jack and Colin. If there was someone else I am forgetting, I apologize. Your work still lives on through this current version of the archive and we hope to improve upon the amazing work you built for us. I can't see how our organization would exist without your work to build the archive into what it has become. 

Lastly, I want to thank all the artists, record store owners, venues, promoters, listeners and anyone who has been a part of MFT in some way over the years. 

It’s been over 15 years since the first version of the site launched and we haven’t quit our mission of spreading Indiana music and supporting local artists. To be honest, I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon. Local art has the power to transform our community for the best and I have seen it happen multiple times through our organization. Long live local music and thank you for supporting and being a part of MFT.