Any reason why ILM is so quiet these days?

they prob always were recommendations engines - there's just so much choice now that unity is less likely. and not really such big overarching things going on at any one time. plus personally, and i don't think this is just age, in the last few years the ease of finding older music via spotify has been a big influence on what i listen to. i get all my new music via threads here, mixes on soundcloud, a tiny bit of bandcamp, and then when i decide to buy some vinyl, i might pick up a few things i hadn't heard at a record store or on their site.

personally i guess i also feel like my job and just, the world as it is, means a lot of reading in a given day. i also think there's a lot of competition out there for our time and attention, when it comes to reading. i don't know if that affects other people's desire to read on ilx, but for me it does. the idea of arguing about music feels fairly distant to me now - tho occasionally i might get drawn in it's p rare.

xpost

Discussion/recommendation is a false binary though. The reason ILM was such a good recommendation engine is because the quality of the discussion attracted enough posters who were wide-ranging and inquisitive enough that you often felt like you had all bases covered. Like, a dilettante could follow the electrohouse thread and have a pretty exhaustive overview of the scene. Same for the R&B thread circa 2010 or so. But it's honestly useless as a recommendation engine these days. Plenty of big-deal releases barely get mentioned any more, there's barely motivation even to post something you're into.

what i meant to say about older music is that there's a pull on time and thought from that as well - there are a lot of things i find or discover that are old and i might revive the ilm thread, sometimes, but those old threads do kind of sink like stones as well.

xpost to matt

Like I'd be interested as to how many people are actually listening to those playlists on the regular, I suspect it's a much smaller number than the ferocity of this discussion suggests. There's just a general lack of curiosity about a lot of stuff.

Also more generally playlists aren't seen as cheating, they're a core way for millions of people to consume music these days - there's a reason why people are moving from radio to jobs at streaming services and some of them are doing good work, but I'd rather listen to one compiled by an individual I trust than crowdsourced one any day.

if ilx can't get ideological about the consumption of music there's no point

obv I enjoy ilx in its guise as low-stakes recommendation farm, but overall I think ilx's negativity is amongst its most important features, and that ilx at its best involves clowning received wisdom, fighting over the basics, & yes getting ideological.

there are times when ilx gets to the heady rarefied state where scholars harmoniously come out of the woodwork to pool their expertise in a certain direction on a thread, but even then I think its valuable to kick back against the formulations that are offered and challenge the values ppl are esteeming

dads on ilx, as in the wild, are more likely to be well-meaning, complacent, & oblivious to the tyranny of their own common sense than straightforward dickholes, tho they may become that if their self-image is threatened. a lot of the ppl whose meanness is bemoaned are often outside of the consensus & not coincidentally some of the most interesting & valuable posters

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.

? AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

i've been on the internet for too long, and the last few years for me have brought about this slow realization that verbal abuse was from its inception a core value of the internet. it seems to me that ilx is a community that pushes harder than most message boards to challenge this value.

a recommendation means more to me when somebody can back it up with reasons. it's a lot easier to tell somebody to listen to something than to tell somebody _why_ they should listen to something.

I miss the me that would devote so much time and energy to persuading people to listen to things.

There's some truth.

xpost to Garda - yeah I get that, I suppose I miss things like the 2004 electrohouse thread or the early wave of Kompakt enthusiasm where someone would write something that would make you want to seek that record out immediately. If you don't know the person posting it, why click on one contextless Soundcloud or Youtube link and not one of the other 50 in the thread? It makes it theoretically easier but it also drains a lot of the excitement and the mystery and the discursive interest away, and I think that's also had an effect on suppressing discussion and turning threads into recommendation engines.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, February 8, 2017 4:51 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bingo

I don't consider myself an expert on anything so I have historically relied on what are pejoratively known here (I guess?) as "gatekeepers" (who I am of course free to disagree with) to steer me in the right direction. If they're sterling writers, well, all the better, but really, I don't care that much about whatever cult of personality we've built up here around critics, and, like katherine, really don't know / care who's who based on screen names, with a few exceptions. I like it this way and think it's a good thing because it levels the playing field a bit and challenges hierarchy; ideally, a newcomer can come here and call out a Pitchfork staffer or label owner about a track and her opinion is equally valid

My least favorite ILM thing in 2017: someone revives a thread about an artist with a new release, and so, unfamiliar with that artist's previous work, I scroll up to read the previous assessments / opinions / arguments by smart people, and more often than not find a post that basically says "I can't even" followed by an expired Youtube link. (other examples: "I mean," "this for chrissakes," "never forget," etc). My life is mysterious enough without wondering about the mega amazing thing I'll never get to see on the Techno Bobbins thread or w/e.

Also weird to me how Spotify's unfairness to artists is always an afterthought. Of the 28 people who voted 'nay' on the forks thread, my guess is that half of those are conspiracy theorist worrying about forks 'leveraging' the tastes of ILX or whatever (could not care less about this, personally, generally enjoy forks' posts), and another third just finds those threads to be boring / a clusterfuck / impenetrable. Spotify is terrible for artists, and that's why I voted 'nay'

ideally, a newcomer can come here and call out a Pitchfork staffer or label owner about a track and her opinion is equally valid

this is shadowboxing I think, i don't think there have ever been gatekeepers on ILM whose tastes have been particularly feared except in the narrow "don't poke the bear" sense.

Maybe not, but I'm not sure I'd have poked so many bears when I first came here if I knew I was arguing with people who wrote for the Voice and the New York Times, to say nothing of the many artists, label owners, etc who have posted here over the years. Now idgaf but it isn't the 'regulars' we're worried about, right? It's 20 year olds who found us by Googling and might have something interesting to say about Thundercat

http://i.imgur.com/9PcE7hb.png

I scroll up to read the previous assessments / opinions / arguments by smart people, and more often than not find a post that basically says "I can't even" followed by an expired Youtube link.

Broken links are bringing back the mystery to music

ILM's might get a little busier today. GQ just linked to the 'Ignition (Remix)' thread: http://www.gq.com/story/best-books-of-february-2017

don't worry, the meanness and broken links will soon see them off

I wonder if any of those people who registered after the Reply All episode about the "So Not Gonna Happen" thread ever posted anything

ILM's might get a little busier today. GQ just linked to the 'Ignition (Remix)' thread

I was all 'wait why' then I remembered the thread's prime mover and a new book and all was clear.

hoo boy.

Made it through this discussion, mostly made me sad that forks' spotify-lists for 2017 aren't up yet :(

leech

Also weird to me how Spotify's unfairness to artists is always an afterthought.

― Wimmels

who has the moral authority to argue from that position? not me. i come from soulseek, from napster, and when i had to draw the line between what i would and would not do it wasn't on the side of the artists. the best i could say is that i would never pay money to steal, and that's why i'm not on spotify, because when i look at what they pay artists it looks like legalized theft to me.

but musicians don't get a fair shake from me, never will, and if i wanted to be truly fair to artists on an individual level i'd listen to a hell of a lot less music. and on a collective level, i'm convinced that musicians never have and never will get a fair shake under free market capitalism. choosing to vocally disapprove of spotify isn't going to change that.

ILX: The Book

Spotify just doing what agents, managers, club owners, promoters, etc. have done for decades. don't hate the player hate the game

Spotify should have a tipping option.

To return to the thread question though, a big factor might be more people on ILM coming to terms with their or the board's limitations re representation (don't really want to say diversity as it can and has been well argued more as normalisation).

This was suggested in a few different ways already I realise - even ogmor's post re 'a lot of the ppl whose meanness is bemoaned are often outside of the consensus & not coincidentally some of the most interesting & valuable posters' points to it. I prefer to read that as an explanation of any meanness rather than an actual justification of it tho (including the use of 'dad' as an insult).

That and the msg board model seeming outmoded to a younger crowd (tho this could flip back as people in turn react to the evident limitations of social media channels would it also pull more younger people to places like ILM?) seem like the bigger problems than whether there are too many polls and playlists.

i keep telling you guys, you can make polls invisible. i did that so that i would actually stop complaining about polls. you're welcome. #bethechangeyouwanttosee

I think the complaint is the artist polls which cant be hidden? But I also think its more an idealogical hatred of polls that even while hidden they still exist and are popular and that annoys some posters?

The fear is on the one hand that the board will end up being vicperry'd back to the stone age without a baseline level of what is being called "meanness" and on the other that the inquisitive teens whose input will apparently bring meaning into the lives of the 30somethings who post here might be put off; the truth is probably that neither scenario is v likely and registration will never match/exceed natural attrition with or without what is essentially just the house style of the internet: both sets of people are busy posting in the exact same tone on social media

you yourself Scott (and others) tried to kill threads in the past you didn't like with image floods and I'm glad that's gone out of fashion

Are there even artist polls anymore? I quit after I found that participating in a few was enough to completely kill my enthusiasm for the artists in question.

inquisitive teens whose input will apparently bring meaning into the lives of the 30somethings who post here might be put off

not just teens, all the other things the dickdads are not too!

should i put flyers for ILM up around my local university? i might do it anyway.

i liked some of the artist polls - the floyd one was good - but some of them (like the eno one) just wound up as canon retreads unfortunately.

dads are a chilling vision of a possible future

Are there even artist polls anymore? I quit after I found that participating in a few was enough to completely kill my enthusiasm for the artists in question.

― how's life,

stirmonster is doing a 60s poll at some point in the next few months and he will ban canon stuff like beatles, stones etc. the funny thing is I dont think there's ever been a 60s ballot poll before so those who would want that might have their noses put out of joint.

dads are a chilling vision of a possible future

― ogmor, Wednesday, February 8, 2017 11:21 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a good tagline for the flyer. i was also considering "the messageboard deej doesn't want you to see"

you could run a who is gabbo deej campaign

maybe ilm should merge with another struggling message board, in "Weekend magazine incorparating Titbits" fashion

Whizzer AND Chips

imdb just dumped their boards according to the guardian

I Love Movie Databases

The 'M' in 'ILM' always meant Morbs anyway, right?

This was suggested in a few different ways already I realise - even ogmor's post re 'a lot of the ppl whose meanness is bemoaned are often outside of the consensus & not coincidentally some of the most interesting & valuable posters' points to it. I prefer to read that as an explanation of any meanness rather than an actual justification of it tho (including the use of 'dad' as an insult).

The problem, I think, is at some point the "arguments" became the least interesting thing about this board. Eight years ago maybe they played out as exciting exchanges of ideas, but these days most of the informed, sharply argued debates about music seem to take place on Twitter, where there's more accountability and focus. So the debates here more often than not just end up being a bunch of aggro critics bros trying to pwn each other. That might be entertaining if you understand the group politics and know who turrican is, but if you don't (and even most regular posters here don't), then it just ends up being impenetrable--especially to lurkers, who understandably avoid the convo for fear of being hazed themselves.

imdb just dumped their boards according to the guardian

at least something good happened this year

stirmonster is doing a 60s poll at some point in the next few months and he will ban canon stuff like beatles, stones etc. the funny thing is I dont think there's ever been a 60s ballot poll before so those who would want that might have their noses put out of joint.

― Odysseus

how the hell is stirmonster determining "canon"? rym rankings or something?

i'd be cool with a poll where the top artists are les goths and stella, mind.

might be entertaining if you understand the group politics and know who turrican is

new board description

see you in 600 posts

― I Am In Atlanta And Thug Is Young (imago), Monday, 6 February 2017 17:16 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

turrican is known as universal soldier on the megadrive

These days I come to ILM less for the debates over current music controversies, which are covered to death on Twitter, and more for the specialized threads that let certain critics advocate music that doesn't attract much attention elsewhere. Like the Dawn Richard, Kehlani, Julien Baker and Pinegrove threads that last year have been nice little communities, however small. They're not the most exciting or heated threads, obviously, but they're the ones providing a depth of conversation I can't find elsewhere, in part because there's no barrier to entry.