What the Heck is a Songoose?

Surely, if you’ve stumbled across this site, you must have wondered at some point what the heck a songoose is and why I chose it as my web address. Based on all we know about URLs, is songoose really a good choice? If nobody really knows what it means, how can I stand by it? On one hand, my name is relatively short and not all that complicated, but on the other, it does not relate to the topic at hand or come to mind easily when you think of this site. In reality, it is a mediocre choice, but I like it and I’m going to keep it anyway.

Without making this a treatise on good URLs, let’s cover the basics. The most important thing about a URL is that people associate it with a particular website or company. It must also be easy to remember, and the shorter and less compliciated the better. Companies like IBM and Microsoft have it easy — one word, relatively short, and its the name of the company. Lesser known entities, including internet startups, have a little bit more of a challenge. Amazon.com and yahoo.com are prime examples — like songoose, they are relatively short and not all that complicated, but neither relates to the topic at hand or really made you think of the particular company before you had heard of that particular company. (And although some people might relate “Amazon” to a “huge, vast jungle of products”, anyone who says they would have made that connection before the .com boom is full of it.) But, because these sites were well run and offered quality content, people quickly learned the names and thus easily associated the URLs with the company.Of course, none of this does anything to explain why I chose the name Songoose.

This particular story starts several years back, when I originally launched songoose.com as a music site. I had decided to create a site that reviewed the music I love, which is mostly alt.rock, alt.country, and alt.folk, stuff that receives some but not much mainstream music coverage. I had found out about a lot of my favorite artists via the internet and thought that with this new site I could both return the favor to other fans and, at the same time, enhance my writing and website management skills. I had a great idea; all I needed was a name. I tried desperately to come up with something topical, searching through all the basics, i.e. musicreviews.com, then moved to clever, i.e. noteworthy.com, but I couldn’t find anything available that really scratched me where I itched. I knew that I had to follow the basic rules, as described above, and thus choices such as note-worthy.net really weren’t going to be good solutions.One day it hit me — songoose — a (non)word who’s signifigance I could really only discuss with my childhood best friend Dennie Nave, but that had personal meaning to me and had the word “song” embedded into it — perfect for my little world of music. (Little did I know that people would start referring to the site as the Song Goose, two words instead of one, not remotely rhyming with “mongoose” as had originally been intended. A bit like the “Oneders” in “That Thing You Do” — it was a great idea in theory, but not exactly the best execution.) Regardless, it was settled, and songoose.com was born.My dreams of songoose becoming a household name like amazon and yahoo before it never did become reality — songoose.com the music site did only moderately well, bolstered mostly by an interview with then-unknown, now cult favorite Alexi Murdoch, but in the end failed because I was unable to recruit enough additional writers who would write passionately and proficiently and most importantly for absolutely nothing besides the occasional free cd. Music sites need to be up-to-date and refreshed frequently, and quite frankly it is impossible to have a full-time job and produce a quality music site with no addtional help. So that leaves us where we are today — with the relaunch of Songoose.com in a new direction — a bit like the reformatting of a radio station, if you will.

Although, as I’ve pointed out, the whole music site idea has fallen by the wayside, I do still need a vehicle with which I can spout my vast and otherwise useless knowlege of various and sundry issues, and it is about time I get on board with the whole blogging revolution. And, as you’ve probably surmised, I’ve decided to keep it at the songoose.com URL. The easy reason I’m doing this is that I already own songoose.com, and I already have a hosting provider for songoose.com. But to be perfectly honest, the main reason is because I like it, and I want to keep it around. It means something to me personally, and that is pretty hard to find. It is not like there are so many great other options — last I checked hotbabes.com was already taken. So what the heck… songoose it is. Since I’m starting anew, my dreams of being the next amazon or yahoo are renewed as well. Keep your fingers crossed.