Community Building

At the same time, the early internet dramatically expanded the social landscape of music culture. Before the Web, music scenes were largely local, sustained by physical proximity and in-person interaction. The web was capable of connecting people interested in similar music regardless of how far apart they were. Websites like progarchives.com, a popular music board, utilizes star ratings, comments, and hyperlinks to create a community of music lovers. Often utilized to review albums and discuss general music ideas and topics with other like minded people. Music boards, paired with P2P file-sharing, created a sense of community that felt like it was being attacked by the artists they loved and enjoyed. While piracy is wrong, the web birthed the ability to decentralize files and media with the snap of a finger. Niche genres like punk, electronica, underground hip-hop, and metal all found their place online.

These communities created a sort of decentralized media hub, not for profit but for the love of music. Users created album reviews, concert reviews, posted and advertised local scenes and shows, and even created resources to freely share their files. Napster, a peer-to-peer(P2P) file sharing service, pushed this idea to the forefront. Users participating in these services found themselves truly being the pioneers of the digital age as it took big media companies nearly fifteen years to catch up to nineteen year old web savvy users(Dowling, 2019). Stephen Dowling, a reporter for BBC, explains that while the demise of Napster was evident, it truly did pave the way for modern streaming services and could have been successful just like Spotify and Apple Music. When we take a closer look at what Napster was doing, it seems like this was the intention of Berners Lee when he decided to integrate hyper text to the internet. While less serious and more consumerist driven, music based websites had a prominent figure in shaping the 1990s internet culture.