Phase I
Earth-Rhythms began as 'The Encyclopedia of Enigmatic Music' (EEM) in 1993. At the time it was only small list of artists Vaughan (webmaster of EEM) enjoyed listening to. After creating FPWeb , Vaughan's website dedicated to Frank Peterson (co-creator of the Enigma project, and arguably therefore the Enigmatic music genre), he opened a small sub-page on that site listing some other artists that fans of Enigma might have wished to explore. Because of the explosive growth of the genre though, that list grew too unwieldy to display all the artists on one page. Hence its migration to the site known as EEM. From the beginning Vaughan wanted a site that would provide readers with enough general info for them to decide whether they would be interested in a particular artist or not. From there they could seek out more detailed info and hopefully buy the albums. Also by dividing artists into sub-categories, you can find similar groups to ones that you currently enjoy simply by looking at other artists listed in that particular category. The site had overwhelming support, with many thousands of visitors and a loyal group of people who regularly submitted suggestions. Note: this site ONLY lists artists that mix modern rhythm-orientated music with chants. It has never and will never be one to document 'New Age' music (which usually has no beat or rhythm) or 'World' music (which usually is just voice accompanied by acoustic or traditional instruments with no synthesizer or electronics).

Phase II
Soup and Cirqle, creators of Deep Forest's Deep In the Jungle (DITJ), were working hard to maintain and evolve their site. Like Vaughan, their musical interests stemmed beyond Deep Forest to similar artists of the evolving genre. There had been talk of including information on other projects similar to Deep Forest since the beginning of DITJ, but it wasn't until 2002 that Forest Rhythms emerged. Forest Rhythms was similar to EEM, with a list of group descriptions, as well as audio samples and album reviews.

Forest Rhythms's creators were a bit distressed about the magnitude of work required to effectively provide information on the hundreds of albums of the Enigmatic-World genre, and so they began to rethink their approach. In early 2003 they asked Vaughan if he would be interested in working together towards one site, and he accepted. Work on a PHP-automated cataloging system had already begun, Forest Rhythms was an early template and EEM's massive collection of information was used for a lot of the content. After many months of designing, cataloging and delays, Earth-Rhythms was finally unveiled in November of 2003.

Goals of Earth Rhythms
The initial goal of EEM was to reach 100 artists which was achieved. After reaching 100 artists the categorization became unwieldy and so many new sub-genres were created based mainly on geographic regions. Because of the more detailed artist profiles of Earth Rhythms, with buy links, audio samples and photos, many of the group pages still need additional information and media. We also hope to start providing detailed album reviews, which will be the most work. Many of the artist profiles also need updates, if you know of specific needed updates let us know. Finally we want to make Earth-Rhythms interactive, so that the site can grow with each active visitor. Currently visitors can only vote and write up album reviews, but we hope to expand your involvement.