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This page is aimed squarely at newcomers so there's very little earth-shattering stuff here. This page is framed as answers to four fairly obvious questions:
This is an opportunity to present a very brief overview of his career. It doesn't go into great detail on which songs are great or why, I've instead opted for a cut-down bio which discusses the more obvious aspects of his career. Throwing around obscure facts now is only likely to alienate the newcomer so I mention a hit single, his ARIA award and reference inclusion in a Rolling Stone "best of" list. These are concrete things that newcomers can relate to easily.
Again, an obvious question with some straightforward thoughts in response. I do wax lyrical a little ("the red wine of pop") but by speaking in the first person, I try not to sound too much like a marketing brochure. These days the public can see through advertising guff, so putting that on a website can be counterproductive. If I'd pretended to write objectively, in the style of a professional journalist, that would have felt odd because a site that talks about Stephen Cummings and nothing else could hardly pretend to be objective.
Using the first person is something I try to do as much as possible on the site. Part of the reason for that is to make my own biases clear to the reader. Also, a fan website for a musician works best when there is a sense of community there, and that can be so much harder to achieve if the text works to distance the audience from the writer.
The most obvious answer to this question is also offered here: a link to the mp3 page of the site. I'll discuss that further later.
This is namedropping, pure, simple and blatant. If the reader dismisses my opinionated rants, this list is harder to dismiss. Maybe some of these links could be considered tangential but taken together they build an impression of the musical circles that Stephen moves in. If the reader has never heard of Stephen, maybe they know and respect the musicians listed here.
This section is a little out-of-date but it at least provides a few starting points for those looking to buy Stephen's music. There's not much to say about this except that I try to make my advice as practical as possible by disclosing that some of Stephen's albums can be harder to track down than others.
In addition to assisting newcomers, I've noticed a number of venues have taken bits from this page and used it in their own promotional material. This might be on a website for a venue or in printed promotional material, such as flyers. More broadly, I've found that the whole site is a great resource for journalists and others researching Stephen's career on a professional basis. When Stephen appeared on ABC-TV's "Studio 22" program in 1999, I received an email from one of their researchers that thanked me for the site. While all "newcomers" can be considered potential fans, it's a bonus that some of these newcomers may influence a greater number of people than I can reach directly.
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