FM History
Louie C
Founder of FreestyleMania.com
FreestyleMania.com started back as a concept in 1997 as a noticing demand of Freestyle Music was evident as the resurgence of dance music had once again hit the Top 40. With the introduction of Trance and other forms of Dance in the late 1990s, it was my plan to re-introduce the dance community to the art of Freestyle Dance Music. With that said, we realized there still was a market for Freestyle Music, its enterprise and its willingness of its fan to never allow it to die.
After many failed attempts, we formalized in 1999 by founding member, Luis Campos, and many other contributing individuals like contributing colleagues, Mario Marroquin & Talia Campos.
As a member of the famed, Freestyle Nation Board, I quickly established relationships with fellow like fans, artists and record label personnell and through their input, advice and help, we officially launched our site in January of 2000 and slowly began networking and cultivating our presence.
It was through this particular time that I remember dedicating every single minute building this site and its content in doing interviews, going to concert shows and posting every possible aspect of news. As a result, we became one of the 3 top websites in Freestyle during this time and established many industry relationships shaping ourselves as one of the pioneering websites in this genre of music. We were humbled many times over with recognition of our efforts that I am proud to say we were featured In:
Many trade publications such as DMA Magazine (various editions) along with Groove Magazine on numerous occasions. We have also been featured on the BAD BOY CD volume series 3-5 and can find our site name on back of the CD covers. We were mentioned as a contributor of support on Freestyle Fever Divas Volume I on Fever Records. In addition, we have done many music promotions for record labels and artists such as Johnny O, Stevie B, Noel, TKA, Information Society, MicMac Records, HighPower Records and Tommy Boy Records, just to name a few.
Our website over the years has provided a direct outlet from Aritst to Fan. We were one of the first sites online to bring Freestyle Music to the masses. Our past services included a broad range that included paid services such as FULL artist and record label promotion, direct mail marketing, banner promotion and merchandise sales and also offer FREE select promotion that include basic artist and record label promotion. Through the dedication of our fan base, we evolved as a premier site for all dance music fans alike with the introduction of “Mania Vibe” in 2005 as an outlet for other forms of music that include Trance, House and POP.
In mid 2008, we reached a mile stone in reaching over 1 million hits a month. But we didn’t stop there!!! Over the next 3-5 years from 2009-2014, this site has gone through many changes and upgrades. We turned our website into a social network where members can sign up and contribute feedback on our posts and share with us any upcoming news via our “contact” section.
Since 2014 to 2020 our site had a premier design and look but then tragically we suffered a hack from overseas that took down our site. As a result, we lost many posts and content from 2014 and on. We were only able to restore up until 2013 data.
Now in 2024, we are vowing to return to the freestyle scene with a dedicated new updated site launch by late 2024/early 2025 with a brand new site that will modern and up to date. We look forward to that journey and continuing our impact and pioneers of bringing Freestyle Music, its news and culture to the “true” freestyle fan. With the rise of Tik Tok, IG and other platforms, the need of physical websites like FM may seem like a thing of the past, but our goal is not to compete with those platforms but instead serve as a beacon of actual news worthy content for our genre along with history and real interviews. This is our commitment and will always be our way of life – Freesytyle 4 Life!
