Throughout 2019 Castle Ragtime Company has remained mostly quiet. We have kept busy sourcing new pieces for our collection as well as exploring new features and services for castleragtime.com. Today I would like to share an update on the future of Castle as well as upcoming content in 2019.

The Future of Castle Rag. Co.

Over the last year we have struggled with the logistics of publishing new ragtime music. Castle was originally created with the purpose of sharing new and old ragtime music and culture with the world. A large portion of this was to be accomplished by publishing the works of contemporary ragtime writers and musicians. After much consideration, however, we have decided to wind down Castle’s role as a music publisher. Instead, we will focus on becoming a platform for ragtime in the twenty-first century by promoting the works of contemporary ragtime artists and making as much classic ragtime content available as possible. Stay tuned for more on this, including how to promote your music, in the coming months.

Texan and Proud

Castle Ragtime Company has always been a proud Texan institution. A major part of our preservation work, therefore, is naturally focused on Texas music history. We plan to continue this commitment through additional site content focusing on Texas music traditions, Texas composers, Texas publishers, and other Texas music history.

Planned Website Updates

We plan to make several improvements to site structure and content over the next few months as we pivot away from music publication and towards music and history promotion and reference. A brief overview of planned changes is as follows:

• Expand the current Collection page with more content.
• Make more sheet music available for download, especially those that cannot be found anywhere else (we do have quite a few).
• Create a dedicated History section of the site for topics such as ragtime history, subgenres, publishers, and composers.
• Add a section for contemporary ragtime music, media, and links.
• Add additional external links to useful resources.
• A shop is also being discussed as a platform to sell contemporary ragtime music as well as branded collectibles and authentic sheet music that we have acquired more than one copy of.

New Features Today!

All of these changes and updates will be rolling out in stages throughout the year. As for today, we have two important updates to share that are live right now!

• The Collection page has been expanded with all new features including:
  • In-page text search
  • Filter by multiple musical categories simultaneously; users are no longer limited to viewing a single category at a time.
  • Filter by era; users can now filter by era on top of musical category for even more specific queries.
  • Filter by collection; users can now now filter queries by special collection or subject. This includes collections such as Classic Ragtime, Texas publications and related sheets, select publishers, as well as a “Rare Finds” collection, for those ragtime collectors who have seen it all.
• An all-new Sheet Music Gallery page has been added. This gallery focuses on the ragtime aesthetic. In addition to sharing artwork in an easy-to-browse format, we will also be able to more easily display multiple cover variations without the need to visit that piece’s individual page.
• An all-new Resources page has been added featuring links to other useful ragtime and sheet music websites.
• The main navigation at the top of every page has been reshuffled to highlight our new content as well as prepare for what is to come. Additional pages can be accessed through the footer or search bar.

In Conclusion

If you want to be notified as more new features are added, I recommend following Castle Ragtime Company on social media! Our Instagram is fairly active with highlights from our cover gallery. The Castle Ragtime Company Facebook page is mostly focused on news and updates. You can also sign up for our email newsletter if you are only interested in larger updates.

I cannot wait to share more with you in the coming months. Thank you for your continued patronage.

—Christopher C. Castillo, Proprietor