Reaction to: "Music Groups. Why are there so many?"

Written by Makke

As a little follow-up to Erik's article in the last Hugi issue, about the large amount of music-groups in the scene, I'll write my opinion on this. Which is not so much different from Erik's.

I also think that there are too many groups and releases in the so-called music-scene, and it's impossible to keep track of all the releases. One thing that makes it even harder to keep track of them is the lack of information from the musicians themselves. Many releases end up like nothing more than topics of IRC channels, and if you're not there at that moment you'll miss the information. This way only a handfull of people get the information, and for a person like me who doesn't have the time or the money to hang around on IRC all day it's totally IMPOSSIBLE to know what has been released lately! Some releases get posted on alt.music.mods, but that's not more than a few, and the postings are always from the same musicians.

If I'm not mistaken I think that it's in every musician's interest to spread his/her work as much as possible, and the way it is now doesn't work for the common scener. Why? Because it takes a long time to find the releases, and you won't spend an hour every day looking for releases by people you maybe don't even know they exist.

We're talking a severe mission impossible here. The way things are now only the inner circle of the music-scene gets to know what's hot and what is not.

What can we do about it? Well, we can't forbid people to create groups and release songs, we can't say that "you're not allowed to release more than 2 songs/month, otherwise find yourself another scene to relate to".

So what can we do?!

A few months ago I posted a suggestion on the United Trackers messageboard that the United Trackers could arrange a monthly release list covering as many music-scene releases as possible. My suggestion got little attention, and the only reply I got on it was (and this is not a quote as I can't remember the exact message and who it was from) something like:

'That would be hard, if not impossible! There are too many releases.'

Hmm - so what's the situation now?!

It might be hard to document every release, but most of them should not be too hard! Wouldn't it be better if a monthly (or weekly) publication of the releases got announced? Trackers could send in information about the releases like SIZE, MUSIC STYLE, URL etc. etc. Would this be impossible to do? As I said before it's in every musician's interest to spread the music, and what would be better than a comfortable list covering the latest releases and activities? Maybe not perfect, but better than the total chaos and anarchy that rules now.

Now you might ask yourself: "Makke, if you're so interested in this list, why don't you arrange it yourself?"

The reasons are:

1. I'm not known enough to do this. When I posted the suggestion on the UT-messageboard no one cared, so why should I start a project like this if no one cares whether I do it or not? I'm simply not respected enough for people to care about my pitiful suggestions.

2. I don't have the time to do this. I'm involved in much more in the scene. I can't do everything I want to, though I would if I could. :) Me and trid/Comic Pirates have thought of introducing the 29 hour day, and the 10 day long week. This is the only way to get enough time. ;) For now we'll have to do with the old system and prioritize.

Those are the reasons. And if ANYBODY in the scene can pull a thing like this off it MUST be the United Trackers! They have 3000 members who show interest in them, and if you could just get some of them to drop an e-mail when they release something the list would do. AND when word spreads about the list more people will contribute with their releases. So UT-organizers what do you say about this? Is it possible, or do we have to use the old chaos-system?

I sent this article to Kosmos/KFMF (Yo, Kosmos!) (founder (?) of UT) and asked for some comments, and I guess I got more than that. :) In fact Kosmos spent the whole day coding a script for this feature, and this is some of what he wrote back:

'This is actually a feature that I meant to do for over a year now! That's right! Since January 1998 I've been trying to make something like this. You know what stopped me? I was busy with other shit. Today, after you bugged me, and it finally made me pissed off at myself for not doing it earlier, I spent the whole day working on it. And I'm proud of myself that I have accomplished something like this, even if it took a whole day! :)'

I think Kosmos should get loads of credit for this, and now we can only hope that people will use it. I know I will! Hmm - maybe we could get Trax in Space to do the same. :)

Cheerz, and great thanks to Kosmos for his effort!

- Makke / Comic Pirates / Hugi