Just imagine what’s going to happen to links on the web if youtube ever folds.
Building a shaky house of cards is bad, building on someone elses table is insane.
I still listen to Weirdo Radio a fair bit. Lots of obscure and weird stuff to listen to and buy.
http://weirdorecords.com/zen/index.php?main_page=page&id=12&chapter=12
I loooove weirdo radio… They play some of the best stuff and I never know what it is.
Many of the great blogs’ links are still there, like the Egg City Radio blog, and although they aren’t updating the blog as often FM Shades’ links were just all redone.Egg City Radio
Yep. So many of my music blog links are dead or woefully ignored by their bloggers. Still, there are a lot out there. Otherwise music blog aggregate sites like Hype Machine wouldn’t exist.
If you’re a fan of obscure recordings, I think both WNYC’s Spinning On Air and New Sounds are available via streaming these days.
Heh, when Youtube first appeared my reaction was “Wow, that’s a really well done video service, too bad it’s going to be dead in 6 months.”
I had seen many video services come and then go when they burned up their VC on bandwidth bills or got buried in lawsuits from every single media cartel. Early Youtube wasn’t even plastered with advertising like so many of the failed services. Of course now we have those obnoxious interstitial ads and completely one-sided removal policy.
Well, blogs in general have kind of lost their appeal. True, certain blogs have done well, but the great explosion of blogging was basically a fad. The shear number of blogpost and wordpress blogs is mind numbing. I had a friend convince me I “needed to start blogging” as if it would solve all my problems, but my short-lived blogging experience was pointless-- a lot of work that didn’t generate anything for me other than stealing my time. I could start an obscure music blog using just stuff from my own record collection, but what is the benefit to me? It would be a lot of work, cost me money for bandwidth, and possibly bring legal headaches.
The way I see it, this is just culling the herd. Hundreds of me-too alt music blogs fade into obscurity while the most successful ones soldier on.
Big social networks and easy free streaming have changed the face of music sharing of the whole spectrum of audience size and taste.It doesn’t matter if it’s mainstream or teeny tiny niche stuff. Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, etc. have made it simpler to find what you want to discover through those those instead of visiting individual blogs and forums. And that kind of networking makes it easier or content curators of really small niche stuff,too, to share what they want to share. If you cast a wide enough net or attract a devoted enough following, yeah, doing your own whole blog might be effective enough to be worth the extra hassle. But I could see the allure of sharing via one of the big social networks instead for a whole lot of folks who would have been obscure music bloggers during the height of that kind of thing’s popularity.
In general, the internet seems to have made everything less obscure than it used to be.
Didn’t click the article yet but I agree, there were some great obscure music blogs and they always had download links. I remember a good French ye-ye one, one specializing in early early electronica, and I think a south american one on German prog rock. Downloaded everything I could. Those blogs were also a great way to get digital rips of movie soundtracks that had never been released on CD, sometimes years before vinyl to mp3 options were available to the general consumer.
That is an heretical notion to those who Truly Believe…
Well, two of the three that I had bookmarked years ago are still around, good to see. One of those things you find, then bookmark so you can go back to go over the back catalogue (but never get around to doing).
Excellent for subcultural music. Should really have a hunt through them to see just how many download links still work.
Captain Crawl. Music spider nonpareil.
I started harvesting and presenting new releases at mp3com in 1999, producing a radio show.
Over the years, a campaign continued to shut down major free music sites, as one by one disappeared, and 2008 was the year that the last remaining big sites were all taken out at once by the record label cartel competition. It is that campaign started by Bronfman at the RIAA which led to mp3com being shut down, and music.download.com, and GarageBand.com and so many others as the covert war on independent artists has continued.
Indeed, a once thriving independent music industry has been reduced to a smattering of remaining sites like BandCamp.com and ArtistServer.com and the other originals which remain, and the once vibrant scene of music blogs and their like have faded as the glut of new media continued to grow.
I have studied closely the decline of the internet enabled open music industry as I have continued to produce my radio show of new releases which are free, and it has become harder to produce because the once very connected and gathered artist communities have largely been scattered into obscurity.
I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of media we have all become accustomed to, and the ease at which we access it, and thus, it’s decreased relative value in an ocean of excellent music that is so vast for any one person to hear it all, the process of recommending music became pointless, for there is just so much good music all around everyone that one need not even look for it, or be recommended.
Many still continue though, some because of the work they have put into their sites, others because they are artists themselves, documenting their scene, and others because they still have visitors they continue to contribute the time to produce blogs and podcasts and radio shows for.
I am still producing my live radio show at http://synerdata.net after 15 years now, and each quarter I review and harvest around 200 to 400 hot new free releases and mix them into a new show with artist URL’s to download the songs one would like, as a special service. I have often wondered how much longer I may continue, but the audience keeps coming, and so I continue to put in the time.
Another well-connected source of the best new music by the best artists can be found in the award winning podcast by Anji Bee at http://anjibee.com who keeps going strong.
No posts since 2011 on MixtapeMixtape, but some damn sweet recordings there:
http://mixtapemixtape.wordpress.com/
Fluokids is good for emerging electro (plus their french back-announcing is cool)
http://fluokids.blogspot.com/
Live Set DB is freaking sweet for live recordings of largely electronic and hiphop tunes:
http://lsdb.nl/
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