How It Started

The tale of IfYouLove.net started with a boy. Me. It also included a girl, namely, my girlfriend. The idea for a site like this came up, when I found myself making a mixed-CD for my girlfriend. The CD itself had a distinct sound to it that I wanted to maintain, and after completing about 70% of the CD, I found that I had too few songs to declare the Mixed-CD complete, and had exhausted all the songs I knew that would fit on the album. I wanted something new. Something that she had, preferably, never heard, and one that would make her think "Wow, he knows a lot of great music! What a great boyfriend, and all around model citizen."

My first resource was my pal Brandon, who could always recommend great musicians, depending on the sound, genre, style. But he was travelling in Europe, and therefor unreachable. My next resource, Mr. Kieran Samuck, who can always recommend some great bands based on musical theory, time signatures, use of reverb, and shredding-ability. But he was not online at that moment. With no one to turn to, I needed the internet.

As I searched throughout the internet I found a few sources that helped, but almost all were either generated by a script which logged views, or by some marketing-PR team. In both cases, I found it to not be the most reliable. I just needed that kind of friend that could make some recommendations, taking into account the particular sound of the mixed-CD. So rather than search more I set about making this site...a site which would be peer-driven. Nothing fancy, nothing forcing me to listen to songs I didn't want to listen to, or even listen to songs. Just a simple, text-based site, nothing flashy, driven purely by content, by it's users, by people who have similar tastes, and can make great recommendations.

This is what I came up with. I hope you like it.

~A. Novin (Designer & Developer of IfYouLove.net)