Any reason why ILM is so quiet these days?

i called ppl lazy turds for listening to the playlists & not reading the thread

i guess that could be considered toxic but really i think its more just vivid juvenilia

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

oh i also said ban forks but i thought that was obvious hyperbole

i do wish they'd ban his playlists, though.

if that's the opinion you have, sure, but having this opinion means you can't really complain too much about the site's lack of appeal to the overwhelming majority of music listeners who find the idea of "brain draining" via listening to a playlist mind-boggling petty and stupid, let alone the idea that making some playlists is grounds for a callout thread

calling me petty and stupid seems pretty toxic, idk

Is forks still around? I was fond of him or her.

I didn't call you petty or stupid. I did, however, call the idea of getting upset about somebody else's playlists petty and stupid, which it is.

feel like things are getting a bit closed off on the internet in general. purity tests and fascism all around. i was banned from one message board twice recently, each time writing a total of 2 posts that were not abusive or directed at any other posters. i got accused of trying to stomp out free speech, trying to silence people, mistaking my opinion for me saying that everyone has to think this way. they banned me for trying to censor people, it is kind of hilarious.

ILX seems more loose and free-wheeling, like a controlled experiment. sometimes people get banned, but you have to be a sustained disaster. ILX isn't swarming with trolls and quality control is good overall. sometimes people are overly negative, and will respond to anything you say with a personal insult rather than contributing to the discussion. you have to just let it go and treat them as a temporary troll. getting upset only makes you look like an idiot, trolling them even further. this might be entertaining but probably not for you. just walk away.

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.

I missed that thread but I assumed it was an ethical objection that people have that Spotify is bad for artists?

alas no

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"

imo debating about whether a not-100% listening link (songs excluded not due to whims of artist but of licensing and release format), benefitting one vendor being a good thing is a good thread. while not one-to-one, would we be cool with an unofficial "here's everything on one record label from this thread" but link to the label website every time that popped up? if it was a major label, and they did so like clockwork?

it's not as simple as "welcome to being on ilx, fuck you for not listening to spotify!" but close. I voted that having such a link is fine but I think the conversation is essential. I have subscribed to at least one streaming service for every month of last year and playlists are good but it's always a run to the middle when you want to just listen to all the shit you want to listen to. There are a couple up-and-coming companies again doing cross-network playlists but yeah, they are looking for a cut, too

not recognizing specific influences and exclusionary forces, even if people are a little potshot-firing on the thread, is antithetical to the idea of people simply finding and listening to music

ha, there are sooooo many threads like this in february. going back years. cruelest month to be honest with other ilxors. just so you know.

i'm gonna read the whole thing though.

katherine, were those people regulars on forums or people who had tried or considered streaming from a few places? I'd ask them how they felt about, say, their new album only being on the company they didn't stream from, not something that was unrelatable

february and august usually.

When winter is tiring and the dog days are going. Makes sense.

otm

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.