A Nostalgia for MP3 Blogs

The internet is old enough for us to have nostalgia for how it used to be, but most people don’t. Sure, the internet is a flaming garbage pile now, but 20 years ago it was a really ugly flaming garbage pile that ran really slow.

But recently I’ve found myself waxing nostalgic for the internet of 2005-2010. Not because it was before social media ruined everything, but because it was the age of the MP3 blog.

I had to format my hard drive last week, losing all my music in the process. Thankfully I have a cloud backup, so a USB drive with all my files is currently en route. I was happy to discover that iTunes allows for streaming of any song you’ve ever bought on the service. Yes, I’m sure this is not a new feature. What I’m saying is that it’s new to me. So while all my CD and vinyl rips are MIA, I can still listen to anything I’ve ever bought from Apple’s store.

Sorting those downloads by year, I was really surprised by what I was buying in 2005 and 2006. Tracks by artists I had no memory of at all, like Astaire, 4th Avenue Jones, World Wide Spies and Tangle Eye. There were also tracks by artists I had a vague recollection of, indie darlings of the past like Cursive, She Wants Revenge, and The Hold Steady. It took me a while to figure out why I had songs by these artists, but then it hit me; I most likely discovered them via MP3 blogs.

I realize that we’re so far removed from the era of popular MP3 blogs that anyone under the age of 25 probably has no memory of them or their influence. For those you who were too young to have been there, MP3 blogs were blogs (duh) that shared MP3s (double duh), but there was a bit more to them than just that. They were almost always personal endeavors run by no more than a handful of contributors. They were well-curated too. If you were into post-punk-revivial, indie rap, hardcore punk, or whatever, you knew which blogs to check out to get your fix of the latest music. They were a really big deal for a while. Music sites like Spin and Idolator would link to them, and in the age before social media, blogrolls with long lists of MP3 blogs were goldmines for finding new tracks by new artists, or occasionally the old track from a band from a bygone era that you’ve never heard of. MP3 blogs didn’t just help me find new artists, I would’ve never discovered some of my favorite forgotten older acts like Polyrock or Stardrive if it wasn’t for MP3 blogs.

But most of the blogs were dedicated to new music, and my favorite bands from the mid-00s were ones I discovered via MP3 blogs, including Kaiser Chiefs, Wolfmother, She Wants Revenge and Louis XIV. Yes, I realize that a lot of those bands don’t have the best reputation these days, but whatever, I dug them at the time and I’ll still defend many of their best tracks as standout tunes worthy of critical re-evaluation. Their albums might not have always been great, but these bands were really singles bands in an era that didn’t have singles, so MP3 blogs filled that gap. Sure Louis XIV’s first album might not have been the best thing ever, but the songs that popped on my favorite MP3 blogs sure were good. Often I would discover a band via an MP3 blog and then download the odd album cut from iTunes if I dug what I got for free. That’s where these random tracks in my library came from.

A lot of MP3s for MP3 blogs were provided by the labels or artists themselves, but far more were not, sharing music illegally with no permission at all. Additionally, many of them were hosting the files on blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger. Illegal content and a lack of platform autonomy is a bad combination, and that’s what spelled doom for the majority of MP3 blogs out there. DMCA takedowns quickly became the norm, and blogs were often shuttered with little or no warning at all. Even the ones that played by the rules seemed to get taken down. They would always go in purges, you’d wake up one day and find several of your favorite blogs MIA, with their lush archives wiped as well. It’s hard to find even an abandoned one now. They’re just gone.

Of course, it’s not hard to find new music today. MP3 blogs begat YouTube embeds, Soundcloud and Bandcamp sites, and streaming services like Spotify. MP3 Blogs died so music sharing could go legit. But it some ways it’s just not the same. The curation isn’t the same, and the writing sure as hell isn’t the same. Remember, you can’t have an MP3 blog without the blog part, and a lot of these sites had great writing! For me anyway, that was an important part of it. Anyone can make a list of tunes to listen to. Not many go through the effort to tell their audience why they should listen to them.

Shout out the Fluxblog for keeping the dream alive.

Fluxblog, the first MP3 blog is still kicking it, but most of my favorite MP3 blogs aren’t just dead, they’re buried, the remains scorched. Of my favorites, the only one that still remains in any form at all is Lost Bands Of The New Wave Era. Sure, it hasn’t been updated in over a decade, but those old posts are there, and that place is an oasis of obscure should-be classic new wave tunes you need to discover. And then there was Pop77. A different sort of MP3 blog that instead of sharing individual tunes, created custom mixes of new and old tracks. That site is long gone, but the mixes actually live on thanks to the Internet Archive. Want 30+ hours of obscure music for free? Download that shit.

And hey, not to toot my own horn, but Lost Turntable is still alive and kicking in 2018 and it ain’t going nowhere. Until you can find find 12″ remixes of 70s prog rock tracks, obscure B-sides by forgotten bands, and dope Japanese techno jazz on fucking Spotify, my work will continue. 

It’s great that music is easier to get now, but I’m never not going to be sad that my “MP3 Blog” folder in my bookmarks bar is forever empty. No Spotify mix or YouTube playlist will ever be able to replace the joy from discovering my new favorite band thanks to a post by and MP3 blogger who’s taste I trusted without reservation. No algorithm is going to ever replace that.