musdom.r52.ru is the site of Muzykalny Dom (Musical House), a Nizhny Novgorod company that sold professional sound, lighting, and projection equipment and handled its design and installation. The company's office was located in Nizhny Novgorod at 2 Yubileynaya Street, and its phone numbers began with area code 831[1]. The Wayback Machine's first snapshot of the home page was taken on 2 February 2001, the last on 22 December 2019[2].

What the company did

In the nn.ru site directory, the "Musical House" entry described the firm's business as follows: "We sell and install professional sound and lighting equipment for discotheques, clubs, restaurants, cultural centers, radio and TV, turnkey cinemas, as well as related equipment and musical instruments"[3].

The home page set out the same activities in more detail. "Our line of business — sales, design, and installation," the home page stated; it went on to list warning and public-address systems for shopping centers, stores, and offices, conference-room equipment, professional sound and lighting equipment for clubs, restaurants, sports facilities, cinemas, radio and television, integrated security systems, and the sale of musical instruments[1].

Each line of business was spelled out as a list. For sound — acoustic calculations and measurements, equipment for radio stations and TV studios, outfitting and installation of recording studios, cable products. For lighting — theatrical lighting, power distribution devices, lighting control systems, intelligent lighting equipment, special-effects generators, laser systems. For security — video surveillance, access control (turnstiles, barriers, parking equipment), burglar alarms, anti-theft and screening equipment. Musical instruments were grouped into plucked, string, wind, keyboard, and percussion instruments[1].

A distinctive sign of the times was the presentation-equipment section: alongside video projectors and screens, the page offered overhead projectors, slide projectors, filmstrip projectors, and video presenters, as well as blackout curtains and mounting systems[1].

What the site looked like

The top menu had three items — "About the Company," "News," "Contacts" — beneath which ran the line PROFESSIONAL SOUND AND LIGHTING EQUIPMENT in Latin script and the blocks "HARMAN Catalog," "Our Projects," "Partners." The catalog was split into sections: sound equipment, lighting equipment, musical instruments, projection and cinema-projection equipment, warning and public-address systems, conference systems, switching equipment, seating[1].

The contacts listed postal code 603057, the address "Russia, 603057 Nizhny Novgorod, Yubileynaya St., 2," a "Directions" link, phone numbers +7 (831) 431-28-69 and 413-13-99, and two email addresses — musdom@nts.ru and musdom@yandex.ru; the number 413-13-99 was additionally repeated in large type[1]. By 2015 the address had been refined to "Yubileynaya St., building 2, office 20," the nts.ru email address was gone, replaced by pziso@yandex.ru, and the menu had gained "Price List," "HARMAN Sound Catalog," "Equipment Rental," "New Arrivals," and "Pandora LED Street Lighting"[4].

The site's footer read: "Official site of Muzykalny Dom company, design by ingvard (c) filling musdom"[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site made it into the nn.ru directory — a catalog of Nizhny Novgorod websites: in the "Firms (Enterprises): Household Appliances: Audio-Video" branch, its entry sits between "DVD-nnov" and the HI-END center "JazzMobile"[3]. The directory showed each entry's ranking on Counter.nn.ru alongside it; neighboring DVD-nnov had "Rating: 13," while "Musical House" had "Rating: none" — meaning that as of September 2003 the counter had not registered it[3]. In the surviving results table for the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, the site does not appear[5].

This is a typical case for the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of an industry business card: the site existed not for traffic but as a showcase of a price list and contact details for clients — venues, clubs, and cinemas. For more on how the surviving statistics of that era work, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Final years and closure

By November 2018 the text of the home page had changed in small but telling ways: instead of "OOO 'MUZYKALNY DOM'" it now read "Company 'MUZYKALNY DOM,' Nizhny Novgorod" with the note "(new site)," the line of business had expanded to "sales, design, installation, and servicing," and musical instruments were now sold "to order"[6]. The address and phone numbers, however, stayed the same[6].

In all, the web archive's index for this address holds about eighty snapshots, the last dated 22 December 2019; the archive has no record of any later visits to musdom.r52.ru[2]. As of this article's writing, the domain in the r52.ru zone does not respond, and all that remains of the site are the archived snapshots of its home page[2].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2012 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Index of home-page snapshots in the web archive (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru site directory, "Firms (Enterprises): Household Appliances: Audio-Video" section, 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2015 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet voting results, 2004 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2018 (archive)