I didn't grow up during the Punk movement but the commercial "revival" of sorts kicked off by Green Day in the mid-90s. Green Day was on a indie label, Lookout! Records, before hitting it big with "Dookie." When you bought their first two CDs/cassettes a small catalog of Lookout! Records' other albums fell out with a listing of bands I'd never heard of before. None of these bands had websites so information was really limited. You'd have to buy fanzines or know other people in your town that listened to those bands. If you were lucky maybe one of those bands came to your town and you got to see what they looked and talked like for the first time. I can't even imagine what it was like to see Black Flag touring every town in America in the early 80s introducing thousands of kids to a new subculture and form of music.
My point is, maybe I'm jaded now but music was so much more interesting then when there was mystery and not everyone had an opinion about a band before their first mp3 came out. I think the disposable quality of mp3s makes music less valuable too.
The internet also killed regionalism in music for the most part where a certain "scene" would have a certain sound as bands around an area being influenced by each other. See [1]. I'm not sure what could have been done, it's a natural by-product of the internet, but I miss it.
I did come of age during the Punk movement, and I sympathize with your perception of what has been lost (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529054 below). The benefits of a somewhat slow and poorly distributed dispersal of culture are largely gone. The real question, as I see it, is what unpredictable cultural effects will the technology generate.
I clicked on the link to see what this was about. Here's what I got:
"Dieses Video ist in Deutschland leider nicht verfügbar, weil es möglicherweise Musik enthält, für die die erforderlichen Musikrechte von der GEMA nicht eingeräumt wurden."
- This video is not available in Germany because there is a possibility (!) of it containing music for which the GEMA [1] didn't give the neccessary rights.-
Sure looks like regionalism to me.
There is a new line between people who can now fire up some proxy service to access the content nevertheless or know how to find it somewhere else and people who don't know enough and thus can't get past the block or who live in a region with free availability.
My point is, maybe I'm jaded now but music was so much more interesting then when there was mystery and not everyone had an opinion about a band before their first mp3 came out. I think the disposable quality of mp3s makes music less valuable too.
The internet also killed regionalism in music for the most part where a certain "scene" would have a certain sound as bands around an area being influenced by each other. See [1]. I'm not sure what could have been done, it's a natural by-product of the internet, but I miss it.
[1] http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/43235/our-band-c...