It has now been 10 years since I uploaded the earliest version of this website to a 10MB dial-up ISP-provided webspace. A friend who also had a website linked to mine, then Google found it - and all of you are part of the rest!

It all started when I found that I greatly enjoyed listening to national anthems in some geography trivia and encyclopedia computer programs. I began to search the web for anthems but sadly found that most of the anthem websites hosted only MIDI files, which were, of course, unsatisfactory. So I began to search Google for recordings of orchestras and especially of vocal recordings in MP3 format. I began to accumulate quite a few on my hard drive. One day, I was delighted to find a French website with a list format which contained many MP3 links, which saved me much time searching Google. But I was unsatisfied with that website since many links were dead and besides, I had acquired a lot more links than it offered. I wanted to share my findings with the world, so I began to design my website in Microsoft FrontPage 2000!

Thinking of this period brings back fond memories from an earlier age of the internet, before national anthem CDs could readily be purchased online, before YouTube, before social networking, and before over-zealous EU copyright regulations had a huge impact on this hobby. That was the time when we could, as collectors, enjoy rare and unusual recordings with one another for private use, recordings which would have been impossible for many of us to even hear otherwise.

Looking back after ten years, I see a lot of changes to this website. There was the historic point when, after I had become weary of spending my entire weekend updating the website with information provided by people such as Dieter, avtandil, and many others, I installed forum software to supplement the main lists and provide faster access to new information. Eventually, I completely replaced the list format with the forum. And then came the point shortly afterwards, when I decided to consolidate the website from various free hosting providers to a single web host under the domain nationalanthems.us.

Over the past few years, the amount of new contributing members to the forum has decreased, although most of the early contributing members remain dedicated. I attribute the decrease in new membership to the changing nature of the internet. When this website began, there was no easy way to find national anthems online, especially in MP3 format. Today, one can search YouTube and find many entertaining and enjoyable recordings with video with minimal effort and time.

My deepest thanks to everyone for making this website what it is today!

This is the earliest version I can find in my backups, dated October/November 2001.

http://www.nationalanthems.us/nostalgia/Anthems3.htm

The original location was (now long defunct): http://home.dejazzd.com/deblues/

David, I don't remember the exact date I launched the website. I just saw that I had dated the earliest web pages I have in my records October of 2001.