The Jammin Reggae Archives (niceup.com) celebrates 25 years this year.
The archives began in 1992 as a file repository for the Usenet News Group rec.music.reggae which was created by Mike Pawka, the Archive’s webmaster, in 1992. In 1994 the Archives was converted to a website, the first devoted to reggae music, and expanded to include samples of recent album releases as well as many other items related to reggae music. It was also home to one of the first reggae broadcasts on the Internet, Jammin Reggae Virtual Radio, which ran for 11 years. Today the Archives has expanded to include news from around the world, recent album releases, tour schedule updates, upcoming events, recent videos, links to other reggae websites, artists, broadcasts, labels, charts, periodicals, history, writers, reviews, a patois dictionary and much more. Reggae news can also be accessed from Twitter (@jamminreggae) and Tumblr (@jamminreggae). The Archives has been featured in numerous magazines and books including Roger Steffen’s “Reggae Scrapbook”. Last year the Archives was visited by 1.2 million people.