4 ms·
What is easy to overlook is that it's not just cultural artifacts in the sense of the recording itself. These kind of sites also had fans meticulously fill in a
by vanderZwan 3y ago
What is easy to overlook is that it's not just cultural artifacts in the sense of the recording itself. These kind of sites also had fans meticulously fill in all the metadata about the history and context of a song, film or whatever.
I remember a blog post by a historian lamenting the loss of all that community-build knowledge when these sites where shut down (and I bet it wasn't just one historian who felt that way).
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago>These kind of sites also had fans meticulously fill in all the metadata about the history and context of a song, film or whatever. Absolutely, the metadata on What was beyond wikipedia level all completely user managed meticulously. Slightly different versions of releases all catalogued and rips verified to a high standard. This is before we even get into the fact it was all connected so similar artists were navigate-able you could actually start from a band you enjoy and dig into other similar music right from the same site. The cataloging goes way beyond anything Apple offered at the time and anything Apple, Spotify, Tidal offer today.
- crtasm 3y agoMuch of What.CD's metadata was later released: https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release