Addicted to Noise: Let's talk about long-gone music websites

RIP Pure-Impure. I still IM with some people from that one.

Maybe Bob was on DroneOn.

Uh, The List That Dare Not Be Mentioned is still kicking, CB.

New book coming out?

A collection. And there is also his James Calvin Wilsey bio, Wicked Game.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/08/wicked-game-the-heartbreaking-story-of-a-bay-area-rock-star/

I miss buying CDs from CDNow. Does that count?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/CDNow_logo.png

Yeah,they were a great source for affordable CDs. I just checked my email archive, I last bought from CDNow in Nov 2002!

I miss Insound.com. They shipped globally to NZ and once accidentally sent me a McLusky CD with a big vinyl haul, which I was stoked with.

just bought a record off dude who ran the old gridface techno / idm website

was trying to remember the name of another late 90s / early 00s website, very stripped down, practically a newsletter. focused on detroit techno and melodic idm / techno labels like clear, defocus, delsin / ann aimee, etc

Yeah, Insound was a great source for NZ stuff. Last ordered from them in 2007!

Back early 00's, I'd compare prices from Amazon, AmazonUK, eBay, Half.com, CDNow, Musicstack, Vinyl Tap, eil and a bunch of smaller local and UK stores. Almost always found what I wanted and usually at a good price.

CDEurope hit my radar in 1994 - you had to telnet into it! They seemingly listed everything ever released but you wouldn't know if they could actually get any of it. At some point they changed their policy from "charge your card when you order" to "charge your card when we ship" so it was no risk to order every weird CD single I ever wanted. Got a lot of them, too!

I used to love a jazz n groove podcast/website called Bending Corners. It kind of went dormant back in 2014, and I thought it was gone for good. Lo and behold, he posted a couple of mixes in 2020 and 2021. Now I'm wondering if he will post any more. I guess I could email him.

www.bendingcorners.com

Not really a music “website” per se but: does anybody else remember those kiosks at music stores you would either scan a CD’s barcode or you could type in a manual search and it would give miscellaneous release data about the album? It would also give an album review as well and oh my god I used to spend hours at Camelot Music wondering what some anonymous hack thought about Pet Sounds (“This is not just any ordinary album. This is THE great American pop album… It’s the lesser-known songs that really shine… It has been suggested that angels were hovering over Brian when he was making Pet Sounds. There is no doubt about it.”) or Never Mind the Bollocks (“the ultimate first-album-as-greatest-hits exercise. Pub jukeboxers remain terrified of it to this day.”) or whatever. It also showed what an album’s ranking on NME’s Greatest Albums of All-Time list from 1993 was. I made it my mission in life to locate and buy every CD on that list, but then I bought the KLF’s White Room LP, gave it a listen and was like “Well this sucks!” and gave up. It was the All Music Guide before the All Music Guide existed. Would love to read those reviews again.

was trying to remember the name of another late 90s / early 00s website, very stripped down, practically a newsletter. focused on detroit techno and melodic idm / techno labels like clear, defocus, delsin / ann aimee, etc

― the late great

btw i think this was forcefield.org, which eventually turned into nomorewords.net and then (i think?) became the dutch dance vinyl distributor of the same name (i think they also run the delsin webshop)

hard to tell because it looks like archive.org only ever grabbed the front page, and the front page was always ... cryptic

i wrote for both neumu.net and junkmedia.org. neumu is still up, amazingly enough: http://neumu.net/

And they're looking for interns!

even the mp3s still work

It's a trip in 2022 to scroll down and see CoCoRoise and French Kicks!

Neil Young's new album —— LIVING WITH WAR!

snrub offtm

I loved the Velvet Rope industry gossip forums

Any of y'all remember PlayLouder (kind of a British Pitchfork)? I checked it regularly from 2002 through 2006, then it turned into a quasi-Napster, as gradually the articles, the reviews, then the Big Ass Adverts, all disappeared. It sure was fun while it lasted, though. TALK!

Here's an archived link to one of my fave reviews (The Libertines' 2004 album). Clicking the letters in the alphabet above the heading opens up all kinds of reviews from their archive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060109232531/http://www.playlouder.com:80/review/+thelibertines-2/

Hell yeah, PlayLoyder was fucking amazing! Best music website ever. More than any other site, you could tell the writers had such a genuine enthusiasm for new music. They just sounded so giddy with their singles of the week reviews and their live reviews. I guess lots of exclamation points is all you need. And unlike Pitchfork they weren’t afraid to really let loose and slag off the albums that deserved a slagging. I remember they once ran a news article called “Arrrgh! Shut the Fuck Up NME, You’re Wrong!” in response to the NME naming the Smiths as the most influential band of all-time. And me being a music-loving 14-year-old it was right up my alley. They had really great writers too, like Adam Alphabet and Sarah Bee and Luke Turner and Steven Wells and I think even a couple ILXors wrote for them as well. The day they turned into British Napster I was devastated. I just kept clicking all around the site like, “Where the hell are the reviews?!?!” Very sad.

Like, take a look at this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20051017071343/http://www.playlouder.com/review/+blitzkrieg-pop-0/

Would those humor-hating serious bastards at Pitchfork ever publish something like that in a million years?

There was an era of P4K where stunt reviews and 0.0 ratings featured, although I don't know how many of those remain on the site now.

i loved PlayLouder.
i was so active on the message board that i nearly got sacked for time wasting.
ended up submitting a couple of pieces for them (Dolby Live in Chicago), and have met up/had beers etc with several of the gang at various places over the years.

does anybody else remember those kiosks at music stores you would either scan a CD’s barcode or you could type in a manual search and it would give miscellaneous release data about the album?

the company behind those was muze, which was where i worked before i worked for, um, addicted to noise. every single piece of data in that database was manually entered by a small army of poorly paid writers and musicians copying it off cd liner notes. i did a good deal of that data entry and i probably wrote some of those reviews you read, which were designed to hype the records at the retailers who were our clients. and i'm just going to say we took our jobs really fucking seriously and leave it at that!

It was the All Music Guide before the All Music Guide existed.

amg competed with muze for a while and then eventually just bought the company. so, yes!

Thirteen-year-old me is very happy to meet you!

nice to meet you, 13-year-old snrub, and sorry about the whole KLF thing!

Not a website, but in the early 00's there was a Windows desktop app that listed something like half a dozen streaming stations (which you picked) and, critically, what was playing on each at the time, so it was easy to click from one to another based on the artist. Anyone remember what this was called? And is there something similar these days?

Live360?

Well, of all things, a look back:

https://don-armstrong.com/2025/05/21/addicted-to-noise-time-to-honor-the-pioneering-online-zine/