why do we care?

new. i have an answer. i think. but i'm lettin it coagulate for a while.

I think it's purely a positioning impulse, in two senses. For some of us who work on or with music, there's a desire to figure out what direction you're trying to head in, or what central conflicts you're going to be dealing with. And I think, as a listener, there's a bit of the same: as hip-hop, for example, takes up more and more space and influence in the overall musical continuum, some people will be bound to wish they'd noticed that earlier and started paying attention. Essentially a desire to keep up with what's about to happen so you're not completely lost and befuddled when it does?

I have an increasing horror of signposting. It seems clearer to me that nobody can really predict what will happen next or how it will happen, and that guessing via purported scenes or gatherings or hypes is the equivalent of Kremlin review spotting. I trust the musical future to occur as it does.

I'm shaping the future.

Some of us might be musicians. We need ILM to filter our values and taste buds. Once we've got a good sense of the consensus, we'll make the "future of music" how everybody (here at least) wants to hear it. And then proceed get rich and be analyzed to death blah blah blah.

We need ILM to filter our values and taste buds

Well, sorry to say it, but you're fucked then.

oh well