Three of us started Insound in the summer of 1998. It took us about 6 months to develop the website and the content so we didn't launch until March 1, 1999. With all the anticipation and labor, It was kind of like we were pregnant for 8 months. At the time, the world of online retail was not very sophistocated. There were some online stores for pop music, but almost nothing for indie music. Additionally, indie music had not penetrated the mainstream yet. There were no platinum selling Modest Mouse, Death Cab or Shins albums. Built to Spill and Yo La Tengo were giants.There was no iTunes. Amazon hadn't started selling music.

And I still ordered 7" vinyl from small printed catalogs and mailed in money orders. Fanzines didn't have websites. The word "blog" wasn't used. Nobody used IM. There was no such thing as MySpace or Facebook. File sharing was still way, way underground. And every company (except Insound) seemed to be getting a gazillion dollars for quarter-baked ideas.