3 ms·

I dug a website out of an old archive last week. I needed it as a documentary maker has been in touch and some of their questions are answered by just looking a

by buro9 4y ago

I dug a website out of an old archive last week. I needed it as a documentary maker has been in touch and some of their questions are answered by just looking at this website from the mid-late 1990s. It still works. All I used at the time were server side includes and a bit of PERL that was in a /cgi-bin/ . Sure there are some dead links (to some real media files hosted by a third party long-since defunkt) but mostly it just works as SSI is still supported in most web servers and fastCGI exists. I'm installing it on a laptop tomorrow morning to show the documentary maker. Interestingly they were interviewing me about one thing, but the site shows another thing... that we were one of the first music acts to allow the full download of an album online. This was in early 1998 when we put the entire catalogue online as media files to listen to (first as Real Audio files, later as mp3s, before also embracing Napster and even making live concerts available for free via that). It's good stuff, early web sites were fun and exciting. The best feature of this website which was for a record label, is that the bands didn't know what to do with a website so instead I gave control to fans... the whole site was user-generated content as far back as 1996. Things like guitar tabs, lyrics, mishearings, stories, fan artwork... the official record label site was made by fans and just became an archive of everything that the fans and label together cared about. In 1996 this was a link on every page "email if you want to add your content"... it worked.

Minor49er 4y ago
Fascinating. Do you know what the documentary will be called and who's putting it out?
- buro9 4y ago
  No idea :) I verified with the band (Belle & Sebastian) that it was legit and they wanted me to be involved, but beyond that I'll find out tomorrow. From the prelim questions, I understand that their angle is looking at the early web and the music industry and that this is one of two they're initially researching. They're interested in Belle & Sebastian due to the 1999 Brit Award win https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_Awards_1999#Belle_&_Sebastian_(1999) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_Awards_1999#Belle_&_Sebas... and how websites connected fans to bands. They're also interested in Wilco as they believed that to be the first instance of a band publishing a whole album on their website (but B&S did that before, but I thought we were late to the game so someone else must've been first). It sounded early stage though, so I figure their research will inform and help evolve their ideas.

by buro9 4y ago

Minor49er 4y ago

Fascinating. Do you know what the documentary will be called and who's putting it out?

buro9 4y ago
No idea :) I verified with the band (Belle & Sebastian) that it was legit and they wanted me to be involved, but beyond that I'll find out tomorrow. From the prelim questions, I understand that their angle is looking at the early web and the music industry and that this is one of two they're initially researching. They're interested in Belle & Sebastian due to the 1999 Brit Award win https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_Awards_1999#Belle_&_Sebastian_(1999) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brit_Awards_1999#Belle_&_Sebas... and how websites connected fans to bands. They're also interested in Wilco as they believed that to be the first instance of a band publishing a whole album on their website (but B&S did that before, but I thought we were late to the game so someone else must've been first). It sounded early stage though, so I figure their research will inform and help evolve their ideas.