Dan Cox (Of Pup Fresh) Interview
For people who are not familiar with your website can you give me a little background information on why you started Pup Fresh and some details around the early days of the site?Dan: This guy Willy, and I were brought on to work for this website called Strikegently. It was a pretty big deal at the time, but the site is kinda dead now. Anyways, we were posting movie download links and porn for him which rubbed us the wrong way. Meanwhile, we had a professional wrestling news blog on the side that we ran as a joke. One night we decided we were done working for Stikegently because we weren’t comfortable with what we were posting morally. So, we converted our wrestling blog into a music blog. Bingo bango.
You have also toured as a merch guy. How did you get into that and how has that helped or hurt Pup Fresh?
It helped give me an image. Not sure if that makes sense. Let me explain. Before I started touring, Pup Fresh wasn’t really a personality. Right around when I started touring, the site headed in a new direction. We started interacting with our fanbase on Twitter, we held video chats, we gave our own twist to everything we did. I think touring helped kickstart that. The tours I did weren’t really anything major, so the promoting I did wasn’t too substantial, but I was able to meet some amazing fans/friends, so that was pretty cool.
For years it seemed like ap.net kind of held the stronghold on the pop/punk/emo/alternative community. Over the last few years that stronghold has loosened a little and a few new sites have really been competitive. One of those sites is Pup Fresh. What do you think allows your site to be so competitive? Is there anything you think your site does better than any of your competitors?
Man…we aren’t anywhere near the level as AbsolutePunk. But I think they could be losing some momentum and prestige because their focus has shifted to helping the other sites in the AbsoluteVoices thing grow. They are giving so much attention to the sites acquired by Buzzmedia, they don’t get as much attention for themselves as they used to. I think what they’re doing with Voices has a lot of potential, the sites that are part of it shouldn’t take it for granted.
One thing I really like that you do is an on the rise segment with your site. What do you look for that would qualify them as an on the rise act?
We actually really suck at keeping up with that feature haha. We just look for bands that we think are gonna be huge. Like…we wanna help them out early so they remember us once they’re huge.
Along with the site you also produce various products. How important is it for you to have those products available and what made you decide to make official products for your site?
Like merch? Merch is huge. It gives us a brand and an identity. If a band sees fans wearing Pup Fresh merch at their shows, that band is gonna think we’re the shit and they’re gonna wanna work with us.
You recently announced your I Survived The Hiatus t-shirt. This has to do with the Fall Out Boy comeback. What inspired you to release a shirt around the event?
Fall Out Boy getting back together inspired it. We were so excited, I don’t think we had any other choice but to put that shirt out.
I read a ton of stuff when news broke Fall Out Boy would re-unite. Your site as well as many others had released details. Property Of Zack ended up getting the main credit for breaking it to the masses. There seemed to be a lot of negative vibes back and forth between you and Zack (via twitter, tumblr, etc…). For those who are wondering what exactly happened with that situation and has all that been resolved at this point?
Back in August, we were told by a close friend that Fall Out Boy was getting back together in 2013. So, we hyped it like crazy. Whenever there was a peep about it, we made posts “speculating” their return, although we knew it was gonna happen. Whenever a band member said it wasn’t gonna happen, we would report on that as well, just to stir the pot. Eventually, we were given more details about the situation, so we kept hyping it. Things like, “oh we’re so stoked about #FOB2K13, just wait.” Nobody believed us because they figured we were messing around. I even knew the exact date they were gonna release the info. Then all of a sudden, Zack comes out with his “Exclusive” reveal of it all. And it was kinda like…yo dude, we’ve been saying FOB2K13 forever…tha fuck is this? Then he went on all of these rants about how awesome of a journalist he is and whatnot, and it was just like...dude…all you did was get a tip from a promoter about them coming back. Then you threw “exclusive” on it and took the credit for what we were saying all along. Not to mention what Keltie Colleen and Beau Bokan were saying all along. It kinda rubbed me the wrong way, especially since there’s a HUGE difference between having exclusive content and leaking something. “Exclusive” typically comes with permission from the band. Zack just straight up leaked everything. Which is fine because we’ve leaked tours in the past. We just never had the balls to throw “exclusive” over something we weren’t given permission to post.
When you first envisioned the site what was your main goal? Have you achieved that goal?
The main goal was to just make a name for ourselves in the music industry, which we achieved. We just wanna keep growing and make careers out of it.
What do you think the most important aspect of starting a website is to help it become successful?
Don’t try to be like every other site out there. Do whatever you can to stand out or you’ll go overlooked.
I guess that about wraps it up. Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have any closing comments you’d like to make?
Thanks for interviewing me. Sorry to anyone that had to deal with reading this, I didn’t take time correct grammar or anything. I like speaking much more than typing. Check out Pup Fresh. We’re annoying sometimes but it’s mostly a good time. Don’t do drugs. Be safe.
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