The All-New STYLUS.

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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!

i actually think i listen to far more b-sides/bonus tracks/leaks/what have you, because itunes democratises matters - once a song is in there it has the same status as an "umbrella" or "bad romance", i don't have to dig out an inconvenient 3-track cd just to hear one b-side. go look at youtube or last.fm comments about leaked tracks and demos - there are people enthusing about those, just as there are about big pop singles. less people, but if anything i'd bet that the numbers are higher than there used to be for obscure rarities. i mean, compare a) spending money on cd single, b) download-click random track for free - of course b) will mean more people hear that track! i don't know how you don't see this!

Karen:

The Data Migration Thread

I see the logic, Lex, I just don't see the anecdotal evidence - my non-music-geek friends, casual music fans, aren't doing this. They're listening to the Temper Trap album.

couple of points there...

1) how casual are they? if they're genuinely casual fans they probably wouldn't have been the kind of person to care about the b-sides etc back in the day anyway
2) how casual have they become? even if they were the sort to care about b-sides, i'd say getting older has far more correlation with stopping than technology changes
3) the same isn't true of my non-music-geek friends (though i'm not really sure where the dividing line between music geek and non music geek lies: but i mean people who don't frequent music messageboards and aren't in the industry, though i guess compared to some people they're pretty geeky about their music and eager to hear new stuff).

ANYWAY digression - possibly to do with the genres they're into? look if you're into indie, the uk music press is so indiecentric that you really don't have to make any effort to hear about a decent amount of the stuff. maybe not the best but enough to keep you busy. if you're a hip-hop or r&b or garage or techno fan in the uk, you pretty much have to make an effort - and as i said once you make an effort, all songs are pretty much equal.

It'll be interesting to see the quantity of music that will survive as technology changes; it's possible we're in a period of immense availability but that might contract. I read in one journal (can't remember which, I'm afraid) a while back that one of the great fears of archivists is that we're actually losing knowledge with the the growth of digital technology, because format change means something saved to, say, a floppy disk 10 years ago is now all but unretrievable - because who has the hardware to access that information any more? As long as someone is prepared to convert from format to format, then it remains available, but availability depends absolutely on people giving enough of a shit to carry on converting.

In practical terms (this is interesting rather than strictly relevant), we're unlikely to have anything like the quality of writers' archives in the next generation that we've had for the past few, because rather than write letters, they've sent emails that have then been deleted ...

read that as they were all listening to tiger trap and thought <3 new listening public. then re-read and :(

don't even know who temper trap are but cant be as cool as tiger trap

See, I keep reading "Temper Trap" as "Tender Trap", which is also much better.

As an interesting aside, I used to be a librarian.

i've given up hope this will be great article and am now just hoping each record will be conveyed by pictures of bob (& the other one) going through different scenarios

OMG WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT

http://www.thestylusdecade.com/

who does the drawings?

but the links don't work!

i keep clicking on 20-1 and it won't tell me who number 1 is!

can only see the into link and page still...

Whose CDs are those?

@karen, presumably they are rolling the pages out one at a time
@sacredselections, try clearing your cache (ctrl+reload on windows I think)

@KJB: Nick's, I'm pretty sure.

http://thestylusdecade.com/albums10081.html
http://thestylusdecade.com/singles10081.html
http://thestylusdecade.com/globalpalais.html

They are indeed my CDs; http://www.flickr.com/photos/njsouthall/4240804410/

Great Stars of the Lid blurb. Gets to the crux of what we all love about them, without neglecting how 'apart' or 'other' they just seem.

Also, didn't notice Mike Powell or Ian Cohen with any bylines...maybe they're too prominent at Pitchfork now.

You'll see them soon.

Miguel Jiron, a friend of Nate De Young, our web designer, does the drawings.

I gotta say I thought the Stars of the Lid piece was a bit rote, and there were a couple of points I'd properly take issue with.

Yeah, Powell and Cohen are bigwigs now, they don't do lower-end list blurbs; only top 50s!

Gonna throw it out there:

Mike Powell is extremely gifted.

Awkward because I barely see this kind of complete unabashed praise for music writers on ILM, apart from people like Tom Ewing, [nabisco], (Reynolds to an extent).

He and I discussed marriage once.

reading Dom's blurbs is like meeting up with an annoying old friend you couldn't stand half the time when you knew him proper, but his foibles are kind of endearing now, in these small doses.

plus Biscuit got some love, so suck on that P4k

I've never listened to Biscuit.

Also, awkward punctuation/structure on my last post. Obviously like 50%+ of posters here have been properly published, but I feel I see more haranguing of prominent (and sometimes more widely respected) music writers than "oh what a great piece!"

enough/]

Powell's very goodlooking too, the bastard.

Guessing here but I think a sub might have confused Crass the band with crass the adjective in Dom's blurb

Correct. It'll be fixed later on!

man this list is indie-tastic.

How?

Javiera Mena! Did only Andrew vote for her?

I literally can't believe Javiera Mena made the singles list. OMFG

Many of us voted for her after having been introduced by to Esquemas Juveniles and the Prissa record via Casillas.

AND YOU PEOPLE ARE WELCOME!

Seriously though, Javiera e-mailed me and asked what secret favors I had to repay in order to put her behind the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Pretty rubbish list so far but I wouldn't have it any other way.