The All-New STYLUS.

just want to read dom's lol indie that even indie kids dont like but i heard it on steve lamacq + some j-zone essay, who cares what the blurb to #1 kid a is.

Wow, that Lil Wayne drawing looks incredible. Looking forward to this.

will Embrace make the top 10?

URL please - I'm going to stylusmagazine.com and seeing nothing but a leftover page from '07.

http://www.thestylusdecade.com/intro.html

Can't wait for there to be something other than the intro there.

this whole rolling-out-the-lists-gradually thing seems a little bombastic. "t-minus three days" or whatever. just post it.

If only it were that simple.

??

i like this graf:

If there’s anything I really regret about this decade, it’s impatience. I mourn all the songs deleted from hard drives over the last ten years that would have been tolerated and eventually, perhaps, fallen in love with if they were on cassettes or LPs or CDs, the b-sides and album tracks and filler that get overshadowed by ego-songs demanding attention. Thinking about it though, I guess that lists like these are antidotes to impatience; they’re about taking stock, slowing down, making sure we didn’t forget anything important. I’m sure we did though.

There are still, regrettably, a handful of i's to dot and t's to cross.

Looking forward to reading this.

So am I -- and the slow unfolding of it will hopefully just make it more of a pleasure.

unfortunately the rise of the mp3 has left me too impatient to enjoy a slow unfolding

I mourn all the songs deleted from hard drives over the last ten years that would have been tolerated and eventually, perhaps, fallen in love with if they were on cassettes or LPs or CDs, the b-sides and album tracks and filler that get overshadowed by ego-songs demanding attention.

this isn't actually true though? i can't think of any music fan i know who only pays attention to the ego-songs (though that's a nice way of putting it) - in fact with so many ego-songs out there i think most people find it refreshing to have their own personal favourites, album tracks or random leaks or whatever. i think you're waaay off the mark when it comes to blaming the format - really the digitisation of music has enabled far more of the non-ego-songs to emerge than would have otherwise been the case.

also missing the part where most people are hearing TONS more stuff than they would've been if restricted to non-digital media. the "songs deleted from harddrive" are the tip of an iceberg of music that wouldn't have even been known about if not for digitization etc.

i really wasn't ready to read "ego-songs" 4 times in a row within seconds of first encountering the phrase

he digitisation of music has enabled far more of the non-ego-songs to emerge than would have otherwise been the case.

Not to mention the ability to easily dig deeper into one's own collection in the first place! Now that I've ripped the bulk of my collection I'm pulling up things that had laid fallow on the CD racks for a decade or more. Having said that, the flip-side is that some of the stuff I'm reevaluating is getting sold and deleted as well. The truth is, there's simply so much music available I can't blame people for deleting an album that doesn't grab them relatively quickly. True, some things are slow growers, but maybe they'll come back into your view - but maybe not, and that's ok.

The truth is, there's simply so much music available I can't blame people for deleting an album that doesn't grab them relatively quickly

Yes, but the average size of HDs has rocketed since 2000, just as the cost has fallen -- that, combined with the off-site "infinite jukeboxes" of Spotify et al, makes you wonder why anyone would delete anything any more?

To me, a more likely scenario is that you simply lose or forget about something you've heard: I've taken to keeping reasonably detailed notes of stuff I want to hear, or have heard once somewhere, so I don't forget it. And I still have the joy of discovering something in iTunes while looking for something else and thinking: "Ooh, shit, yeh: that!"

yeah, I've started using the star ratings feature on my iPod for the same reason.

Just before the para Lex quoted, I linked to an Economist article; the rarefied posters of ILM may be savouring the "lost songs" I mourn, but the general public isn't, which is my point.

Popular Song is Popular.

But what makes you think that the general public is deleting "b-sides and album tracks and filler" en masse? How do you know those songs aren't still lurking on people's hard drives waiting to be discovered?

but the general public isn't

were they ever? exactly the same people/type of people are savouring those tracks now as did before

Maybe "deleting" is semantics at this point; they're not even downloading them.

Awright I feel the need to rant & ramble on this; skip post if not interested in that kind of thing.:

Maybe us on ilm are underrating the extent to which ppl actually threw out physical music carriers (sheet music, vinyl, CDs) of yore as rubbish, like one does with newspapers etc without a second thought? I've no idea whether this holds true, but

i) there are the hoarders, the major piratey persons, who do not even intend to listen to what they have, but get everything anyways. Maybe for sharing ( = pirating further, if it still has monetary value), maybe for vague archival purposes, but maybe also as a sort of obsession. I think of them as the de facto librarians of our time, though I'm not sure they do;

ii) then there are the ones who get the things they want from (i); these are in essence backup copies;

iii) ok people delete things, but I suspect to a far far lesser extent than in the yore, and the proliferation of mad librarians will only increase;

iv) thus, more or less anything will become reconstructable from a file on a disk somewhere in the future. (The contrast with the yore is easily seen when trying e.g. to image-google something from a specific point of let's say 19th century history; the thing exists in an archive somewhere, but is not instantly accessible through our interfaces, because not sufficiently distributed);

v) in other words, we've never had it so good. There may be a trillion La Roux files on the world's computers, but there is at least hundreds of copies of the obscure 80s 7" singles of The Ammonites as well.

(The previous argument turned entirely on its side: it doesn't matter whether they're downloading them now, as long as the download is available indefinitely.)

If a download falls in a forest, does anyone have the IP address?

http://i45.tinypic.com/r1fr7k.jpg

The mad librarian does.

Damn, my staff ID photo leaked.

yeah, I've started using the star ratings feature on my iPod for the same reason.

― anagram, Saturday, January 2, 2010 4:30 PM Bookmark

hmm, one of those things that i've taken note of but never tried. perhaps i should.

Ned's, typically, otm; files may exist in several places, thanks to mad librarians, but if no one listens to them, if no one brings them to attention, it doesn't matter.

but people do listen to them - and not just people on ilm, any music fan with even a trace interest in using the internet to find music. the kind of person who doesn't have any interest in that is not the kind of person who listened to or cared about these tracks in pre-digital times. you're hand-wringing over nothing.

and if those tracks are good enough, the onus is on you to bring them to attention

By submitting ballots in polls?

"There are still, regrettably, a handful of i's to dot and t's to cross."

Sounds like the old 'techincal problems' excuse.

By submitting ballots in polls?

done several of these

http://twitter.com/thestylusdecade

will there be a 'what they're doing now' bit on the writers/ex-editor?

I'm hoping to Tweet some stuff around that, but nothing on the website sadly.

# sex boobs breasts sexy sex sex 20 minutes ago from web

how can this fail?

I'm hoping to Tweet some stuff around that, but nothing on the website sadly.

shame. woulda been interesting to see what a good grounding the site had been.

why do so many of the most interesting topics on ilm seem to come up in passing on list threads? is this because these list threads are the only place where you have a variety of music obsessives emerging from their particular genre threads to meet and discuss things relating to music and music culture in more general terms?

is there a thread somewhere about the changing of physical media and how this affects both librarian obsessives and casual listeners? and if there is which i'm sure there has to be pls can someone point me in the direction of where i can read about it?

Karen: I'm sure ilm has had that discussion thousands of fucking times. :) just typing in 'wait, did [xxxxx] get 51 sb on this thread?' and you'll get there.

oh, i don't want to have that debate again, i just want to read it!

any key words i should try searching on?

try "hen fap"

Karen - try searching for "digital library" or some variation thereof.

And I think your theory about intersting discussions on list threads has much truth to it.

Lastly. to add support to Lex's position, Mrs. McBB has old cassettes from the 80s filled with the hits she taped off the radio. Same idea, different technology. She didn't care about Duran Duran's non-singles, much like some people today don't care about digging for anything beyond what they're casually exposed to. Same as it ever was.

i read that economist article - idk it supports your theory that these more obscure songs are being lost at all nick. it's basically saying that the predicted move towards the "long tail" didn't happen, and that the blockbuster big hits are still thriving, but it doesn't say that the songs etc that comprise the "long tail" are faring worse. i haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that you need to mourn these songs!

Well I feel like I do!

yes but that is not good enough evidence to make it into a theory!