Addicted to Noise: Let's talk about long-gone music websites

Neil Young's new album —— LIVING WITH WAR!

snrub offtm

I loved the Velvet Rope industry gossip forums

Any of y'all remember PlayLouder (kind of a British Pitchfork)? I checked it regularly from 2002 through 2006, then it turned into a quasi-Napster, as gradually the articles, the reviews, then the Big Ass Adverts, all disappeared. It sure was fun while it lasted, though. TALK!

Here's an archived link to one of my fave reviews (The Libertines' 2004 album). Clicking the letters in the alphabet above the heading opens up all kinds of reviews from their archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060109232531/http://www.playlouder.com:80/review/+thelibertines-2/

Hell yeah, PlayLoyder was fucking amazing! Best music website ever. More than any other site, you could tell the writers had such a genuine enthusiasm for new music. They just sounded so giddy with their singles of the week reviews and their live reviews. I guess lots of exclamation points is all you need. And unlike Pitchfork they weren’t afraid to really let loose and slag off the albums that deserved a slagging. I remember they once ran a news article called “Arrrgh! Shut the Fuck Up NME, You’re Wrong!” in response to the NME naming the Smiths as the most influential band of all-time. And me being a music-loving 14-year-old it was right up my alley. They had really great writers too, like Adam Alphabet and Sarah Bee and Luke Turner and Steven Wells and I think even a couple ILXors wrote for them as well. The day they turned into British Napster I was devastated. I just kept clicking all around the site like, “Where the hell are the reviews?!?!” Very sad.

Like, take a look at this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051017071343/http://www.playlouder.com/review/+blitzkrieg-pop-0/

Would those humor-hating serious bastards at Pitchfork ever publish something like that in a million years?

There was an era of P4K where stunt reviews and 0.0 ratings featured, although I don't know how many of those remain on the site now.

i loved PlayLouder.
i was so active on the message board that i nearly got sacked for time wasting.
ended up submitting a couple of pieces for them (Dolby Live in Chicago), and have met up/had beers etc with several of the gang at various places over the years.

does anybody else remember those kiosks at music stores you would either scan a CD’s barcode or you could type in a manual search and it would give miscellaneous release data about the album?

the company behind those was muze, which was where i worked before i worked for, um, addicted to noise. every single piece of data in that database was manually entered by a small army of poorly paid writers and musicians copying it off cd liner notes. i did a good deal of that data entry and i probably wrote some of those reviews you read, which were designed to hype the records at the retailers who were our clients. and i'm just going to say we took our jobs really fucking seriously and leave it at that!

It was the All Music Guide before the All Music Guide existed.

amg competed with muze for a while and then eventually just bought the company. so, yes!

Thirteen-year-old me is very happy to meet you!

nice to meet you, 13-year-old snrub, and sorry about the whole KLF thing!

Not a website, but in the early 00's there was a Windows desktop app that listed something like half a dozen streaming stations (which you picked) and, critically, what was playing on each at the time, so it was easy to click from one to another based on the artist. Anyone remember what this was called? And is there something similar these days?

Live360?