Any reason why ILM is so quiet these days?

a) yes b) yes, because in 2017 it's more remarkable not to have

as far as "unrelatable" that's kind of my entire argument

fair enough, then why question why people getting het up at one service having priority is weird? because lord know no one is gonna meticulously counter-post other tracks because forks has more patience than most

iirc the original argument was that forks was somehow making a buck from spotify by ~leveraging~ posters' freely-offered knowledge. the rest is mostly frustrated gatekeeping

oh

I demand forks tax returns

The argument was definitely not "I don't like spotify, it is bad, here are some other links to non-spotify versions of these tracks". It was "these goddamn dilettantes stealing our precious precious knowledge".

Drake sucks!

(just got to that part...)

Fuck Spotify too. sounds like shit. canned shit!

The argument was definitely not "I don't like spotify, it is bad, here are some other links to non-spotify versions of these tracks". It was "these goddamn dilettantes stealing our precious precious knowledge".

― emil.y, Tuesday, February 7, 2017 9:58 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc it started out as the latter but drew in the former

the fundamental disconnect with the former might be, you may see it as advertising spotify or whatever, but most people simply see it as making a playlist, using one of the more well-known/well-stocked playlist services

there is no way in hell i'm reading that spotify thread though. polls have been blissfully invisible to me for years now. did you know you could do that? i will note maura's comment though:

ah, february, the month of internet arguing

― maura, Thursday, February 4, 2016 1:39 AM (one year ago)

i see those playlists as forks being bonkers! doesn't it take forever? but he must find it fun. and fun is cool.

i had no problem with glenn using ilx for his mkultra spotify branding guinea pig flow chart test experiments either or whatever the conspiracy theory there was. who can remember? because glenn is a non-malevolent super-genius.

I'm with scott 2018

recently reread big chunks of the beardo disco thread and that is peak ilm for me. a more or less consistently evolving discussion with a high volume of posts over a period of several years, good faith arguments about genre definitions considered from different perspectives, lots of varied opinions about relative quality of records without much snark or unnecessary aggression, plenty of opportunity to discover things old and new. history and context, a good mix of knowledgeable pros and enthusiastic schlubs, inclusive yet without that difficult "new poster sheds his rockist skin" phase. and it's all there to go back to whenever you like, unlike discussions on social media. ilm at its best.

iirc that kind of thing attracted gr8080

jesus christ

fwiw, obviously limited sample, anecdotal evidence not actually evidence, etc. but I asked a couple people whether they found it unethical for someone to make a Spotify playlist of the songs on a discussion forum. responses: "no"; "i... no"; "uh"; "I can't imagine caring about this"; "wherever this argument is happening is somewhere I never want to be"

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Tuesday, February 7, 2017 8:31 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

congratulations on arguing w/ yourself ... no one said it was "unethical" ffs we just said it was "lame & weaksauce"

The argument was definitely not "I don't like spotify, it is bad, here are some other links to non-spotify versions of these tracks". It was "these goddamn dilettantes stealing our precious precious knowledge".

― emil.y, Tuesday, February 7, 2017 9:58 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im not concerned with my 'precious knowledge' i literally am providing free content on this site & have done so for years?

you guys are trying to re-litigate this argument under the guise of caring about the quality of the conversation & how "toxic" it is, its extremely transparent and also weak as fuck

id like to point out that someone observed the hip hop thread was the biggest rolling thread by some measure so maybe the ppl who actually participate in it might have an issue w/ how it's consumed & that's not crazy or absurd

More cultural competence when dealing with music mentioned on the rolling hip hop thread.

people asked why there aren't more newcomers, I pointed out a pervasive pattern that is likely to scare off newcomers. I mean, I could lie and say I have no idea

I joined ILX as a young teen for the quality of its Blue Man Group content. Maybe we need more of that.

i don't really buy the idea that people come to ilm to discover new music and say nothing -- people i know who lurk don't do it for that reason

i can't imagine that many people cared about the playlist discussion, but idk maybe i'm way off

ilm has def fallen off, but the sub board i post on the most is as good as it's ever been, and it has nothing to do with rough posting styles or zings. there are sometimes very heated arguments but everyone stays cool and enjoys chatting with each other, i think because it's been a small consistent group for many years now, so there's a camaraderie and familiarity there that makes it a fun place to post.

old ilx had that same thing and yes one outgrowth of it was stuff people now might consider to be cyberbullying. it happened to me when i started and i'm sure i've participated in it in the other direction, i agree with people like david and lex who think it made them better critics, but it's also made me very good at arguing like an asshole on the internet, so i get why that defense makes some people squeamish.

but the other outgrowth was the same as the unnamed sub board i still read and post on daily -- good discussion among people who generally understood each other's tastes, had a rapport, and yes could also call back to your previous bad arguments to make fun of you and belittle your argument. and yes for the record i would take the bad w/ the good.

for whatever reason (time i guess) that doesn't quite exist on the board anymore imo outside of certain rolling threads. that's at least why i don't post as much.

no one, btw, has insisted ppl should participate in the genre threads. just that if you're going to brain drain them, you should at least be reading the convo & not merely plucking every audio file discussed absent context

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, February 7, 2017 7:48 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why do you care

the key q

i tried one of those spotify playlists one time, can't remember which one - rolling country? - and found it really irritating iirc because literally every track discussed wound up in the playlist - even the ones that got hard-sonned in the thread! so you'd have good stuff mixed in with terrible stuff. yes i'm trying really hard not to use the word "curation". anyway deej for that reason alone i wouldn't see it as a threat to anything so yes, caring about it is a waste of time imo.

i just wanna give a shout out to j.'s post upthread. it's complex and provocative. have the important fights been fought? it reminds me a little of simon r's question about whether dance music has simply reached an optimal tempo - 120bpm is the darwinistic winner. when i look back at old threads from 2003, for instance, after i've finished dry-heaving over the unearned precocity of my own posts, it is remarkable how basic a lot of the arguments seem to me now, battle lines between disco and indie rock or what have you, that seem utterly adolescent now. have we actually gotten better at this? and then sometimes i think there's something adorable, and even in a way desirable, about the stupid tribal clashes over music that we used to have.

Lol at this being a two thread, one way argument now

Like i suppose i could jump in but we've done this like four or five times now and i mean, it's -deej- for crying out loud; I'm pretty sure arguing about dumb shit on the internet was his major.

anyways, carry on and enjoy i guess?

oh and my own thoughts at hostility, zing crew etc - i personally - probably as a result of my privileged position as a dickhole white dude - never minded it THAT much. i have a kind of sixth sense about aggression and filter it out almost subconsciously. i miss a lot of the zingiest posters - ethan, grumpy ol' jess (i think i actually called jess out one time for being too grumpy!). there's something evilly delicious about really well-articulated disdain. only rtc really keeps this flame alive afaict

not that I care to have this argument again, but the anti-playlist thread was started by someone with concerns about one company/brand's marketplace dominance, and no one was concerned about their "precious knowledge" being hoovered up (I am firmly pro anyone listening to the music I like). My dislike was because I felt disconnecting the content of threads from the threads themselves was completely unconducive to keeping the threads alive with actual discussion. This has turned out to be the case bc it's why we're having this clusterfuck now!

i think, aside from perhaps generational/historical shifts in taste and sensibility, there is just a rough limit on the scope of what there is to get / not get about music, and collectively ilm has arrived at it (it's not hard to do), so lacking an infusion of people committed to not getting / figuring out how to get anything (who are often young people for obvious reasons), it does not really meet the conditions necessary for motivating energetic conflicts about whether or how to get things anymore.

like e.g. i'm not into fleetwood mac, never really tried to be into them, understand that some people are v. v. into them and think there is something great to get about them, but i accept the coexistence of that with my disinterest in them. when i was 19 maybe i could have been goaded into an intensive consideration of them that provoked me to re-draw some mental lines, but now even if those lines actually stand in need of a little more re-drawing i am not willfully opposed to that happening by virtue of my existing tastes or beliefs about their social meaning. also, and probably more relevant to changes and stases in ilm over time, i don't feel like i would find out lots more about other individuals or other social meanings by making a point of trying to get fleetwood mac. probably some, but nothing that would be a revolution in my mind.

collectively it seems like we are not as reflective about any of that as we used to be, but 'we' are older and the world (including the world of reflection) is different, too.

great post.

i think the ease of sharing playlists or youtubes or soundcloud/mixcloud, and the increased breadth of the internet has kind of smoothed discussions away a bit. i mean yes, maybe it stops people talking at length about something, but personally i've leaned towards enjoying just sharing music i like and hearing what other people share.

on the other thread i noticed some slight complaints about people sharing a mix and saying 'this is a nice mix" - personally i have deliberately reduced my comments to that level, when posting a mix in a rolling thread or even on twitter. there's enough noise and opinion online - and in a rolling thread i know the collective atmosphere enough not to have to sell something or hype it. let's not pretend that every comment that comes with a link makes the link better. far from it. i don't think i've ever been annoyed by someone posting a link, but plenty of times people overselling things or starting threads with obnoxiously long titles etc just feels like shouting.

a lot of the rolling threads have a fairly comfortable and calm feel, people know each other vaguely and they know what's been discussed. do some links or videos just disappear without discussion? yes. does that make me wish i'd written 500 words about them? no. not at all. i'd rather not contribute to pollution. ultimately the music is the reason the board exists. a link on a thread is more valuable than anything else. comments are good when they're informative or funny. don't really need to read someone describing or interpreting music when i can just click play.

I think in the Youtube era people have got very used to the listening happening IN the thread and the immediacy of response that can encourage. Previously ALL the listening necessarily happened outside the discussion and a sense of shared excitement (or even an IDGI and a need to work through that) kept people coming back. TBH I still think that's the best way. Early ILM was very proudly dilettantish, and "you have to immerse yourself in the culture" types tended to be met with short shrift or outright derision, which is kinda why Dissensus happened.

It shouldn't necessarily follow that playlists discourage discussion (although they're too long and indiscriminate and I never really bother with them), the question is why people aren't going back and talking about the music they're hearing and I think there are more reasons than are really being appreciated here.

xpost to Garda - yeah I get that, I suppose I miss things like the 2004 electrohouse thread or the early wave of Kompakt enthusiasm where someone would write something that would make you want to seek that record out immediately. If you don't know the person posting it, why click on one contextless Soundcloud or Youtube link and not one of the other 50 in the thread? It makes it theoretically easier but it also drains a lot of the excitement and the mystery and the discursive interest away, and I think that's also had an effect on suppressing discussion and turning threads into recommendation engines.

I get how it's maybe different in rolling rap where there's way more force of personality involved. And it's definitely different in parts of the afrobeats threads where people are piecing together how these scenes fit together and how they're perceived in their home countries (even if I know fuck all about that). Sometimes a lot of the interest is in talking around the music rather than about the individual tracks themselves.

they prob always were recommendations engines - there's just so much choice now that unity is less likely. and not really such big overarching things going on at any one time. plus personally, and i don't think this is just age, in the last few years the ease of finding older music via spotify has been a big influence on what i listen to. i get all my new music via threads here, mixes on soundcloud, a tiny bit of bandcamp, and then when i decide to buy some vinyl, i might pick up a few things i hadn't heard at a record store or on their site.

personally i guess i also feel like my job and just, the world as it is, means a lot of reading in a given day. i also think there's a lot of competition out there for our time and attention, when it comes to reading. i don't know if that affects other people's desire to read on ilx, but for me it does. the idea of arguing about music feels fairly distant to me now - tho occasionally i might get drawn in it's p rare.

xpost

Discussion/recommendation is a false binary though. The reason ILM was such a good recommendation engine is because the quality of the discussion attracted enough posters who were wide-ranging and inquisitive enough that you often felt like you had all bases covered. Like, a dilettante could follow the electrohouse thread and have a pretty exhaustive overview of the scene. Same for the R&B thread circa 2010 or so. But it's honestly useless as a recommendation engine these days. Plenty of big-deal releases barely get mentioned any more, there's barely motivation even to post something you're into.

what i meant to say about older music is that there's a pull on time and thought from that as well - there are a lot of things i find or discover that are old and i might revive the ilm thread, sometimes, but those old threads do kind of sink like stones as well.

xpost to matt

Like I'd be interested as to how many people are actually listening to those playlists on the regular, I suspect it's a much smaller number than the ferocity of this discussion suggests. There's just a general lack of curiosity about a lot of stuff.

Also more generally playlists aren't seen as cheating, they're a core way for millions of people to consume music these days - there's a reason why people are moving from radio to jobs at streaming services and some of them are doing good work, but I'd rather listen to one compiled by an individual I trust than crowdsourced one any day.

if ilx can't get ideological about the consumption of music there's no point

obv I enjoy ilx in its guise as low-stakes recommendation farm, but overall I think ilx's negativity is amongst its most important features, and that ilx at its best involves clowning received wisdom, fighting over the basics, & yes getting ideological.

there are times when ilx gets to the heady rarefied state where scholars harmoniously come out of the woodwork to pool their expertise in a certain direction on a thread, but even then I think its valuable to kick back against the formulations that are offered and challenge the values ppl are esteeming

dads on ilx, as in the wild, are more likely to be well-meaning, complacent, & oblivious to the tyranny of their own common sense than straightforward dickholes, tho they may become that if their self-image is threatened. a lot of the ppl whose meanness is bemoaned are often outside of the consensus & not coincidentally some of the most interesting & valuable posters

tbh reading older threads is sometimes very painful. there was a lot of casual hate, a lot more public xenophobia and ironic shaming and stuff in the early years.

? AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

i've been on the internet for too long, and the last few years for me have brought about this slow realization that verbal abuse was from its inception a core value of the internet. it seems to me that ilx is a community that pushes harder than most message boards to challenge this value.

a recommendation means more to me when somebody can back it up with reasons. it's a lot easier to tell somebody to listen to something than to tell somebody _why_ they should listen to something.

I miss the me that would devote so much time and energy to persuading people to listen to things.

There's some truth.

xpost to Garda - yeah I get that, I suppose I miss things like the 2004 electrohouse thread or the early wave of Kompakt enthusiasm where someone would write something that would make you want to seek that record out immediately. If you don't know the person posting it, why click on one contextless Soundcloud or Youtube link and not one of the other 50 in the thread? It makes it theoretically easier but it also drains a lot of the excitement and the mystery and the discursive interest away, and I think that's also had an effect on suppressing discussion and turning threads into recommendation engines.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, February 8, 2017 4:51 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bingo

I don't consider myself an expert on anything so I have historically relied on what are pejoratively known here (I guess?) as "gatekeepers" (who I am of course free to disagree with) to steer me in the right direction. If they're sterling writers, well, all the better, but really, I don't care that much about whatever cult of personality we've built up here around critics, and, like katherine, really don't know / care who's who based on screen names, with a few exceptions. I like it this way and think it's a good thing because it levels the playing field a bit and challenges hierarchy; ideally, a newcomer can come here and call out a Pitchfork staffer or label owner about a track and her opinion is equally valid

My least favorite ILM thing in 2017: someone revives a thread about an artist with a new release, and so, unfamiliar with that artist's previous work, I scroll up to read the previous assessments / opinions / arguments by smart people, and more often than not find a post that basically says "I can't even" followed by an expired Youtube link. (other examples: "I mean," "this for chrissakes," "never forget," etc). My life is mysterious enough without wondering about the mega amazing thing I'll never get to see on the Techno Bobbins thread or w/e.

Also weird to me how Spotify's unfairness to artists is always an afterthought. Of the 28 people who voted 'nay' on the forks thread, my guess is that half of those are conspiracy theorist worrying about forks 'leveraging' the tastes of ILX or whatever (could not care less about this, personally, generally enjoy forks' posts), and another third just finds those threads to be boring / a clusterfuck / impenetrable. Spotify is terrible for artists, and that's why I voted 'nay'

ideally, a newcomer can come here and call out a Pitchfork staffer or label owner about a track and her opinion is equally valid

this is shadowboxing I think, i don't think there have ever been gatekeepers on ILM whose tastes have been particularly feared except in the narrow "don't poke the bear" sense.

Maybe not, but I'm not sure I'd have poked so many bears when I first came here if I knew I was arguing with people who wrote for the Voice and the New York Times, to say nothing of the many artists, label owners, etc who have posted here over the years. Now idgaf but it isn't the 'regulars' we're worried about, right? It's 20 year olds who found us by Googling and might have something interesting to say about Thundercat

http://i.imgur.com/9PcE7hb.png

I scroll up to read the previous assessments / opinions / arguments by smart people, and more often than not find a post that basically says "I can't even" followed by an expired Youtube link.

Broken links are bringing back the mystery to music

ILM's might get a little busier today. GQ just linked to the 'Ignition (Remix)' thread: http://www.gq.com/story/best-books-of-february-2017

don't worry, the meanness and broken links will soon see them off