News

Pages on dbStrings have been viewed seven and a half million times. The count starts in June 2007, when we installed the statistics. The site had already been online for four years.

The number comes from 31,715 auditions, 2,375 courses and masterclasses, 1,478 competitions. These are announcements that orchestras, conservatories, academies and associations published here. Auditions alone account for 4,669,565 views, 62 per cent of the total.

The people who read those pages number 1,106,423, and they came back 2,646,381 times.

What the number actually says

An audition notice is worth little if the people who need to read it never see it. A summer course fills up when the right musicians find it in time. A competition receives good applications when the news reaches the places where candidates study.

Seven and a half million page views measure that, not the site. Every view is somebody who was looking for work or study and found it because an institution decided to publish it here.

The numbers by section

Auditions: 31,715 listings published, 4,669,565 views, 1,877,464 detail openings.

Competitions: 1,478 listings, 489,152 views.

Courses and masterclasses: 2,375 listings, 482,136 views.

Alongside the listings there are the permanent archives: 195,502 views for violin makers, 139,718 for the historical register, 83,575 for bow makers.

Twenty-three years

dbStrings started in 2003 as a collection of double bass audition notices. Today it covers every bowed string instrument and receives announcements from institutions in more than fifty countries. The first four years were never measured, so the real total is higher than seven and a half million.

What has not changed is the method. Every announcement is read before it goes online, and the practical information is checked. Deadline, requirements, repertoire, contacts. It is slow, invisible work, and it is the reason musicians come back.

The next milestone matters little. What matters is that the notice published tomorrow reaches the person waiting for it.

Publish your announcement

If you represent an orchestra, a conservatory or an institution that organises auditions, competitions or courses, you can publish on dbStrings. The editorial team checks every listing before it goes online.