All the best to you and yours, from pipes|drums Magazine!

As the world’s pipers and drummers take a collective break, pipes|drums Magazine wishes all of our readers a merry Christmas. It’s been another great year for us, and we thank you for keenly following us throughout 2012. We counted more than 250,000 unique visitors and more than 2-million visits overall to the magazine in the last 12 months, accounting for more than 5-million page-views in 2012 alone – overall a 7% increase from the previous year.

We brought our faithful readers nearly 300 full-length articles and, overall, more than 500 original pieces came your way in 2012. We couldn’t do it without the help of the world’s best contributors on piping and drumming.

These are the people who provided you their insight and wisdom, whether through interviews, feature stories or reviews, over the last year:

Bill Baines, Malcolm Bow, Gordon Brown, John  Cairns, Dave Clunie, Mike Cole, Kyle Coughlin, Willie Donaldson, Ken Eller, Michael Grey, Jake Jorgensen, Neil Hall, David Hilder, Jim Kilpatrick, Stuart Liddell, Bill Livingstone, Patrick Lynch, Angus MacColl, Iain MacDonald, Ryan MacDonald, Kylie MacHattie, Colin MacLellan, Roddy MacLeod, the late Donald MacPherson, Michael Mahoney, Robert Mathieson, Donald McBride, Willie McCallum, Jim McGillivray, Brian Niven, Libby O’Brien, Glen Rodgers, Mark Saul, Hal Senyk, Liz Sheridan, Anne Spalding, The Style Guy, Jack Taylor, Harry Tung, Robert Turner, Ross Walker and Bob Worrall.

To them and the dozens more who provided news tips, predictions, data and comments during 2012 – thank you!

And we especially want to thank our subscribers and advertisers. These are the folks who allow us to maintain pipes|drums, because the magazine is completely nonprofit – all proceeds are plowed back in to maintenance and development. We appreciate your support and will continue to work to ensure that we return great value on your investment.

From all of us here at pipes|drums, may your tape never slip, may the rain stay off your cape, may your results always be correct, may your band-mates stay with you, may you always keep on the tune, may your neighbours never complain, may our association represent you well, may the beer tent never run out, and may all of your piping and drumming dreams come true this New Year.