The Forgotten Music Archive!

[ZinesByLennon]

Howdy!
I've been hard at work between today and yesterday kicking off a new section of my website called "The Forgotten Music Archive"
This all started because I like to buy random CDs at thrift stores, particularly of indie bands I've never heard of. It had a dead URL on it so I looked it up on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and one thing lead to another and eventually I had a whole list of Web 1.0 Music Artist websites to explore.

Something struck me though, like, clearly there can't be too many people checking this sorta thing out. Navigating the wayback machine can be clunky and slow, and sometimes things aren't entirely archived (graphics and files missing, etc). So, I've *slowly* been going through every website on the page and accumulating a bunch of MP3s (sometimes even MP2s) from these sites and putting together some little artist bootleg albums of every downloadable MP3 from their respectful websites.

I've now mirrored these downloads on my site, with a handy link to the artist's site on the wayback machine for other people to explore as well. Currently, I have a selection of 6 different artists up on my site, with each collection ranging from as little as 2 songs to more than 10 in some cases. I've taken the liberty of adding metadata and making makeshift album covers for these collections from assets found on the site. They're all there for your listening pleasure and can be added to whatever you use to listen to MP3s!

The guidelines for the archive are as follows: The website has to be a 1.0 website (easy. Everything I find meets this criteria.) and the band has to be defunct. (Most of these are, with one exception being The Dog & Everything reuniting and releasing a new single in 2024.) I have one other artist who I found out STILL HAS THEIR SITE UP, so I've contacted them for permission before uploading the files.

I'm sitting on some more files that I'll upload in the near future, but for now the six bands will have to do. You can even sort by genre, and I've also linked the site where I found all these sites, using the site's official graphic.

For fans of graphics, I've also uploaded cool graphics I find on these sites. Click "More" on the site's sidebar to get to them.

If you want to check the archive out for yourself, go to my site and click "Forgotten Music" on the sidebar. Happy listening!

Here's a link to my site! (Click Me)

[TheFrugalGamer]

Oh, this is wonderful! I've been considering something similar lately, though I wasn't going to put in as much work on it--maybe just upload to the Archive. I've been finding a lot of self-published albums lately when I go thrifting, that really look like someone paid to get someone into a recording studio for the day, or that someone made on their PC at home. Less "Indie" and more "DIY." I've started picking them up when I see them, because I don't think anyone else will take the time to archive them, and I find it sad that they may get lost to time. I wasn't checking for websites, though.

Currently listening to one of the discs from Barely Standing. Thanks for sharing!

[MediocreMetastasis]

I just listened to PaperThin by Catfish Haven and I'm already in love with it.

Bands trying to hit it big indie in a pre social media world are always interesting as there are not a lot of ways to market your music and if they don't get popular they're lost to time, only remembered by the band members. My dad owns a vinyl record (one of those thin floppy ones) that has a band advertising a show near where he lived. There are probably so many of these vinyls given out for free of up and coming bands (I'd like to see an archive of those one day).

Maybe I should look through cds at my thrift store but I would be competing with DankPods.

[ZinesByLennon]

Oh, this is wonderful! I've been considering something similar lately, though I wasn't going to put in as much work on it--maybe just upload to the Archive. I've been finding a lot of self-published albums lately when I go thrifting, that really look like someone paid to get someone into a recording studio for the day, or that someone made on their PC at home. Less "Indie" and more "DIY." I've started picking them up when I see them, because I don't think anyone else will take the time to archive them, and I find it sad that they may get lost to time. I wasn't checking for websites, though.

Currently listening to one of the discs from Barely Standing. Thanks for sharing!

You're right, I guess these would be more DIY lol. Maybe I'll archive that CD I found as well. It's a band called Planet Strange, I haven't uploaded their site singles yet simply just because I still need to find a good image for the album cover. They kinda sound like REM or the stereotypical 90s alternative band sound (Hooty and the Blowfish too)

I actually quite like Barely Standing. I separated them into discs cos on their site they separated into Originals/Hard (covers)/Soft (covers) their covers go quite hard I'm afraid lmao. I also really like their White Wedding parody on the end of disc one.