Best Coast

That is probably true to some extent but to another (larger) extent the opposite is true, in that so much of this was consumed by many through platforms that did nothing to build/maintain scenes or communities. So much of the audience was instantly accessed through content aggregators, mp3 blogs, BNM. A good chunk of the initial enthusiasm for band A could come from an audience with little additional buy in. Next week there would be something else coming out of the hose. Coming in the gap between the end of CDs and the return of vinyl it also meant that even if you played something a lot one week it was so easy to forget it even existed a week later. When I visit my parents house I still find all the CDs i bought when I was a teenager but I'm sure a good chunk of stuff I listened to in my 20s has been totally deleted from my memory when I lost an iPod shuffle in Spain in 2011.

i think that goes hand in hand a bit with the era being ephemeral, something that existed as an in-person scene but which was didn't exist as widely in terms of physical media (not a minor thing; that does lend itself to music not being memory-holed.) so it winds up feeling so much further back in time, maybe.

all my MP3s from that era i downloaded and burned onto a bunch of MP3 CDRs and then lost the whole damn thing. def had some GAPDY-era stuff on there. i think in fact it was primarily all that (plus a decent chunk of revived lost albums posted on MP3 blogspots that have now been properly reissued.)

Something that might not be relevant but still might be interesting: I observed and it’s been confirmed by many others that across the board, sales of physical media at shows have spiked immensely over the past decade. A colleague of mine said he thinks it’s because “people are going to record stores less, seeing a merch table is an exciting thing”

xp It was also right before Spotify destabilized the role of indie music as status symbol for a certain type of educated consumer who knew which blogs to follow. I find it harder to look back on that stuff and see something with an enduring cultural significance when it feels like it was so quickly swallowed up.

the most important reason GAPDY took off is because it's fun to say

This is why I got no support for my acronym YPDGA