There’s been a lot of speculation about why dogsonacid.com went offline in October without warning. So I’ll try to fill you in.
Short Story
Dogsonacid had been experiencing a steady decline for a multitude of reasons and finally met its fate and shut down in October. An agreement was then made to sell the company to myself, @Vexus, with the intention to create a new website as a successor to Dogsonacid called Mixspace.
Longer Story
I won’t give a full history of the site, but since it’s birth in 2001, dogsonacid secured itself as being the pillar of the online drum & bass scene, attracting audiences from around the world. It’s long 12 year history and a combination of a very passionate and opinionated community has given itself a notorious reputation, both good and bad. You’ll get a different view from whoever you talk to, but unarguably the site began to experience more and more problems as time went on. If you used the website you’ll already know, so I’ll just list a few areas; in-arguing, the defection of prominent members/DJs, trolling, unfair bannings, reduction of genuine music discussion, overall change in D&B interest and then the overwhelming technical issues.
I won’t go into all the technical reasons, but the site had become a mess in terms of servers, coding and performance. To a point where it just became worse and worse over the years. A relaunch was attempted a couple of years ago, but that just emphasised how big the problems were and just added more.
The site needed major financial investment to resolve the technical issues, let alone resolve the problems with the community itself. The revenue generated from MP3 sales and merchandise in the past had twiddled away and advertising was at an all time low. The high hosting costs to keep the site online soon outweighed the revenue generated and the owners were making a big monthly loss. With lack of an obvious future for dogsonacid and the financial losses, the decision was made to cut losses and let the site go down.
The owners were open to offers with a number of people expressing an interest, but no viable option was found.
This marked the point that dogsonacid was official dead.
Mixspace
So this is where I come in. I’m 23 and from Worthing, UK, coincidently the same town as DJ Fresh (the original founder), so evidently somewhere that produces good talent 
. I was never a member on DOA, but did lurk in the later years so you don’t know me. But I’m probably about the only person insane enough to purchase such a failed business as dogsonacid, but I like a challenge. I don’t believe the quote ‘anything is possible’, because some things are simply not. But I do believe if you have enough passion and commitment for something, you can achieve things you never imagined. Probably getting a bit deep, but financially I’ve risked everything on this deal and spent the last few months working solidly on bringing the site back.. and it hasn’t been easy.
In order to please the loyal members, I originally planned to keep everything the same, same name, same design, same forum etc. But this proved extremely difficult, the problems with the site meant it was virtually unresolvable. With the combination of the poor reputation the name had gotten, the bad state the site was in and the fact I’m a new owner with a new direction, I decided it was best to let dogsonacid rest in peace and start fresh. I’d like Mixspace to be more focused on quality and hopefully this will bring out the more positive sides of the community.
I know this decision will be met with a lot of resistance and complaints, but in time I hope people agree it was for the best. I’m willing to dedicate myself fully to making this forum the best it can be and I welcome anyone that wants to join.
Moving forward
I’ve brought everything back to the very basics and kept the forum as the focus. All data has been recovered including; all posts, topics, avatars, members etc. I’ve made some announcements here: Announcements | Mixspace where you can see some of the main changes, so please leave feedback. Generally there’s nothing too exciting, I just wanted to just get the site back in working order and then gather feedback from the community to find out what new features people actually want and what direction they want to see the site heading in.
The main changes I’d like to make would be that Mixspace welcomes all electronic music genres and that it has a more focused effort on quality.
I think I’ve rambled on enough so I’ll end this here. I really hope people will welcome the new site with positivity.
Nice to meet you all and if anyone’s out in Brighton/Worthing soon, let me know, I’ll buy any member a drink
I officially open the Dogsonacid successor, Mixspace
Vexus
