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by crazygringo
2 hours ago
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I will never understand this kind of sentiment: > You had to dig. You had to seek out small, specialized record stores or spend time on shady forums. You’d track down obscure distros just to order releases you couldn’t get any other way... Now, it’s completely different... That sense of discovery, of finding a truly underground gem, just isn’t the same anymore. It’s too easy now. To the contrary, I can now spend months digging into obscure African 70's music that there was just no realistic way for me to access before. There are 10,000x more obscure gems to find, across the world and across the decades. You can define your taste in far more granular ways than you ever were able to before, follow the paths of so many more artists, and even put out your own music with infinitely less friction than before. The author is missing the forest for just this one tree. |
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I've been thinking about this a lot recently and I realized what was missing for me: the social aspect. Back in the 90's, when I was a teenager, finding new music required you to expand your social network. For me, the height of this was when I worked at a college radio station in the late 90's. It seemed like "cool music" came attached to "cool people." I've since outgrown the snobbery, but when I think about what socializing was like during those years, it often involved hanging around with no other purpose other than to listen to music together and to talk. Maybe the kids still do that but I do not and I miss it.