hckrnws
Music / mp3 blogs were one of the heights of the free and open internet. RSS, Hype Machine [0] (an aggregator), blog rolls, back links, etc, all allowed for both discovery and taste-making in an organic way that still let individuality shine through. New artists could gain visibility just by emailing a couple MP3’s. One could find a subset of blogs that matched one’s general taste and discover new artists every week.
Today’s world of algorithms and an endless sea of new music really pales in comparison. It’s completely soulless.
HypeMachine was a core memory of my adolescence. I reminisce on the way the site encouraged music discovery through the aggregation of all the little niche blogs, among those pigeons and planes. Memories of Sitting in my room with old headphones while sorting by most recent. Unfortunately nothing has ever replaced it for me and unfortunately it has faded slowly as Spotify and SoundCloud gained more prominence. I agree, music discovery has become soulless…
Great to see this! P&P is one of the OG music blogs.
For context, I started music blogging in 2007 (my site is still around - Indie Shuffle - indieshuffle.com). I also started SubmitHub (submithub.com).
About this: "we’re not sure what a music website’s role is in 2026 and beyond".
I waffle between cynicism and optimism. Music blogs used to be major influencers. The rise of social media and streaming platforms squashed a lot of that, and our audiences have dwindled.
Meanwhile Spotify is increasingly pushing toward AI recommendations rather than human curation. I've heard rumor that their editorial team has been halved.
So, where do music blogs fit in? Will there be a resurgence in their audience? The cynic in me says "no". In general, blogs have gone out fashion, and users don't seem to have the patience to listen through a mountain of unknown music.
But there are still those diehard music lovers who do sift through the hundreds of thousands of daily new songs. And there needs to be a human touch to curation somewhere along the line - a space that blogs still fill.
I suppose at the end of the day I'm mostly just blogging for me. For the artists I share, there's some minor exposure - as well as SEO and AI ingestion. I don't think I can make or break an artist anymore - not like we used to back in 2010. But my blog is an extension of me, and I hope that for Jacob there's some similar upside.
I think about this all the time through the lens of "authority" on a topic. When we yielded our gathering spaces online to major social sites (read, Zuck et al) we then gave the content all the authority of what it means to dialogue in those places. Which is to say... not much.
This has impacted journalism, music, science, and so much more. It would take an eternity to hash out my perspective but I think that there's value in realizing that. And I think there's value of creating content from the authority of a personal website with cache. I think music is a great place for this to take off, since you don't need institutional backing. You just need good words and a deep connection to the community. In that way, I hope people do write and create good content through their own mediums/sites. And I hope we all join in reading and sharing those sites.
It might be wishful thinking though.
Thank you for creating/maintaining indieshuffle! I visited 12-15 years ago with very fond memories. Your site was one of the few I checked on rotation due to good curation. Thank you for the human hand you played in music discovery! Visiting the site again today and “it feels very similar to how it was back then”. Thank you for sharing such extension of yourself!
I’m not a musician, but I have referred several friends to SH! You’ve helped them a ton, thanks!
Re the roll of blogs, I’m guessing that to an extent at least Spotify and other recommendation algorithms/bots are taking into account the buzz online and what bloggers are saying?
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