[anticsapp]

I hope this isn't off topic. I've been interested in perusing Usenet groups from the 80s like rec.music -- I swear ten years ago this was possible. I can't figure out how to do it now. Did the massive load of binaries kill off archival efforts? I can't find a search engine for Usenet anywhere. I'm just interested in plan text conversations.

[cfmcdonald]

Google still has an archive, e.g. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rec.music.misc

I believe it's based on the data they bought from Deja back in 2001 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Groups)

[shakna]

The Internet Archive has a usenet collection [0], and whilst I didn't see rec.music there, I did see usenet-music [1].

The archive seems to use mbox for everything, so you'll probably need an email client to read it, but that's it.

[0] https://archive.org/details/usenet

[1] https://archive.org/details/usenet-music